Quote

If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.

Barbara Tuchman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barbara Tuchman
Doctoral
Stifled
Degree
Degrees
Capacity
Taken
Writing
Would

More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

Image
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Completeness is rare in history.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
Barbara Tuchman
Image
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
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
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
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
To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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
That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
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
Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Barbara Tuchman