Quotes from Barbara W. Tuchman

It is worth noting the qualities this historian ascribes to them: they were fearless, high-principled, deeply versed in ancient and modern political thought, astute and pragmatic, unafraid of experiment, and—this is significant—"convinced of man's power to improve his condition through the use of intelligence.

Although 1870 proved the corollary of the theory and practice of terror, that it deepens antagonism, stimulates resistance, and ends by lengthening war, the Germans remained wedded to it.

Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows of the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time.

In the woe of the century no factor caused more trouble than the persistent lag between the growth of the state and the means of state financing. While centralized government was developing, taxation was still encased in the concept that taxes represented an emergency measure requiring consent.

the plague was not the kind of calamity that inspired mutual help. Its loathsomeness and deadliness did not herd people together in mutual distress, but only prompted their desire to escape each other.

Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime.

The only really detestable character in Chaucer's company of Canterbury pilgrims is the Pardoner with his stringy locks, his eunuch's hairless skin, his glaring eyes like a hare's, and his brazen acknowledgment of the tricks and deceits of his trade.

the symbolism of the Garter, a circlet to bind the Knight-Companions mutually, and all of them jointly to the King as head of the Order.

For, as Professor Turner has pointed out, "history originated as myth" and becomes a "social memory" to which men can appeal, "knowing it will provide justification for their present actions or convictions." If

In addition to grand estate, Coucy clearly possessed a personal power of attraction and a faculty for not making enemies.

He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within.

Penalties were established for refusal to work, for leaving a place of employment to seek higher pay, and for the offer of higher pay by employers. Proclaimed when Parliament was not sitting, the ordinance was reissued in 1351 as the Statute of Laborers.

Marco Polo dictated his Travels in French,

Know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.

Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category.

Without a country, you are the basket of humanity.

It was one of the peculiar malfunctions of technology that shore batteries on the islands were generally of inadequate caliber and range to knock out a ship approaching with hostile intent. One is moved to wonder why, if a 10-pounder gun could be mounted on the rolling deck of a sailing vessel, the same or larger could not be mounted on land?

Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.

the irony of man's fate reflected in his image: that all men, from beggar to emperor, from harlot to queen, from ragged clerk to Pope, must come to this. No matter what their poverty or power in life, all is vanity, equalized by death.

These private wars were fought by the knights with furious gusto and a single strategy, which consisted in trying to ruin the enemy by killing or maiming as many of his peasants and destroying as many crops, vineyards, tools, barns, and other possessions as possible, thereby reducing his sources of revenue. As a result, the chief victim of the belligerents was their respective peasantry.

principle, formulated for the occasion, that "a woman does not succeed to the throne of France." Thus was born the momentous Salic "Law" that was to create a permanent bar to the succession of women where none had existed before.

The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke

Though surnamed the Wise, he was not immune from the occupational disease of rulers: overestimation of their capacity to control events. No

For a knight to ride in a carriage was against the principles of chivalry and he never under any circumstances rode a mare.