Quotes from Barbara W. Tuchman

Anything that protracted a campaign Clausewitz condemned. "Gradual reduction" of the enemy, or a war of attrition, he feared like the pit of hell.

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the puzzle that is life on earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design. This

England's traditional tolerance was outraged at last.

Curiously undeterred by the plague, the court held the elaborate ceremonial of the Order of the Garter as usual in 1349,

When those who have the title of shepherd play the part of wolves," said Lothar of Saxony, "heresy grows in the garden of the Church.

When pardoners allowed the belief—though never explicitly stated by the popes—that indulgences could take care of future sins not yet committed, the Church had reached the point of virtually encouraging sin, as its critics did not fail to point out.

government, in the words of one of the group, J. K. Galbraith, was rarely more than a choice between "the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup. When

Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir, and thy thirst will pass!

On August 27 Richard Harding Davis, star of the American correspondents who were then in Belgium, made his way to Louvain by troop train. He was kept locked in the railroad car by the Germans, but the fire had by then reached the Boulevard Tirlemont facing the railroad station and he could see "the steady straight columns of flames" rising from the rows of houses.

BRITAIN'S SELF-INTEREST as regards her empire on the American continent in the 18th century was clearly to maintain her sovereignty, and for every reason of trade, peace and profit to maintain it with the goodwill and by the voluntary desire of the colonies.

virtue without power," as a speaker had said at the Council of Basle half a century earlier, "will only be mocked, and that the Roman Pope without the patrimony of the Church would be a mere slave of Kings and princes,

In the end Britain made rebels where there had been none.

In 1914 "glory" was a word spoken without embarrassment, and honor a familiar concept that people believed in.

Hierosolyma est Perdita

The historian who puts his system first can hardly escape the heresy of preferring the facts which suit his system best.

Schlieffen's plan was maintained and Moltke consoled himself with the thought, as he said in 1913, that "We must put aside all commonplaces as to the responsibility of the aggressor.… Success alone justifies war.

I also know that what follows is far from the whole picture. It is not false modesty which prompts me to say so but simply an acute awareness of what I have not included. The faces and voices of all that I have left out crowd around me as I reach the end.

He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success.

Fear and horror of the franc-tireur sprang from the German feeling that civil resistance was essentially disorderly. If there has to be a choice between injustice and disorder, said Goethe, the German prefers injustice.

The idea of a census was considered an intolerable intrusion. Providing information to "place-men and taxmasters," it was denounced by a Member of Parliament in 1753 as "totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty." If any officer should demand information about his household and family he would refuse it and if the officer persisted he would have him thrown into the horsepond.

the struggle that will decide the course of history for the next hundred years.

folly when it is a perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counter-productive. It