Quote

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

Barbara Tuchman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barbara Tuchman
Wears
Coats
Honor
Eyes
Eye
Different

More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

Image
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Books are humanity in print.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Barbara Tuchman