Quote

Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.

Barbara Tuchman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barbara Tuchman
Russians
Supplies
Accustomed
Fatalities
Calm
Manpower
Accepting
Fatality
Knowledge
Comparative
Inexhaustible
Gigantic

More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

Image
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
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 poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
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
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury.
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
More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
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 I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Completeness is rare in history.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
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
bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.
Barbara Tuchman
Image
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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
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