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  Quotes by Tuchman, Barbara




Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (January 30, 1912 February 6, 1989) was an American historian and author..

"Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism."

Tuchman, Barbara on diplomacy    Share

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"Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline."

Tuchman, Barbara on discipline    Share

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"No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision."

Tuchman, Barbara on government    Share

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"To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents."

Tuchman, Barbara on libraries    Share

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"The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled."

Tuchman, Barbara on world    Share

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"To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost."

Tuchman, Barbara on originality    Share

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"Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip."

Tuchman, Barbara on battles    Share

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"Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed."

Tuchman, Barbara on evolution    Share

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