Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

Books are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

A relentless talent for tactlessness.

No writing comes alive unless the writer sees across his desk a reader, and searches constantly for the word or phrase which will carry the image he wants the reader to see, and arouse the emotion he wants him to feel. Without consciousness of a live reader, what a man writes will die on his page.

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.

Books are humanity in print.