145 Quotes by Barbara Tuchman

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.

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

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

That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.

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.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.