Quotes from Barbara W. Tuchman

THE GENESIS OF THIS BOOK was a desire to find out what were the effects on society of the most lethal disaster of recorded history—that is to say, of the Black Death of 1348–50, which killed an estimated one third of the population living between India and Iceland.

The overpowering unimportance of this MAKES ME SPEECHLESS. – Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas Reed

History never repeats itself," said Voltaire; "man always does." Thucydides,

What proportion of the peasantry was well off and what poor is judged by what they bequeathed, and since the poorest had nothing to leave, they remain mute. For no other class is that famous goal of the historian, wie es wirklich war (how it really was), so elusive.

It must always be an amazement how 18th century letter writers - even, and especially, officials - had the time and capacity to produce their sculpted sentences and perfection of grammar and mots justes , while 20th century successors can only envy the past and leave their readers painfully to pick their way through thickets of academic and the mud of bureaucratic jargon.

Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age.

The poorest man in his cottage may bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions, and Michel duly paid for his clairvoyance.

German soldiers, posted as informers, were found dressed as peasants, even as peasant women. The latter were discovered, presumably in the course of non-military action, by their government issued underwear; but many were probably never caught, it being impossible, General Gourko regretfully admitted, to lift the skirts of every female in East Prussia.

In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great.

No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society.

If there have been mute inglorious Miltons in rural villages, presumably there have been unrealized Washingtons born in unpropitious times.

the Home Secretary, a young man of thirty-seven, impossible to ignore, who, from his inappropriate post, had pelted the Prime Minister during the crisis with ideas on naval and military strategy, all of them quite sound, had produced an astonishingly accurate prediction of the future course of the fighting, and who had no doubts whatever about what needed to be done. The Home Secretary was Winston Churchill.

Mankind's tragedy is that he can draw up blueprints for a better life but he cannot live up to them.

In the same five years three new colleges were founded at Cambridge—Trinity, Corpus Christi, and Clare—although love of learning, like love in marriage, was not always the motive. Corpus Christi was founded in 1352 because fees for celebrating masses for the dead were so inflated after the plague that two guilds of Cambridge decided to establish a college whose scholars, as clerics, would be required to pray for their deceased members.

Now according to German logic, a declaration of war was found to be unnecessary because of imaginary bombings

His decision suggests that an absence of overriding personal ambition together with shrewd common sense are among the essential components of wisdom.

Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done." This in essence was to be the Burke thesis: that principle does not have to be demonstrated when the demonstration is inexpedient.

If it was bliss to be alive, to hunt was rapture.

Eventually the United States became the latter arsenal and bank of the allies, and acquired a direct interest in allied victory that was to bemuse the post war apostles of economic determinism for a long time.

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis. If the Jews were unholy, then killing and looting them was holy work.

Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry, and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe.

Of England's patrician class, the author writes: "It was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease.

To those who think them selves strong, force always seems the easiest solution.