Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
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For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
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When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
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In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
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History is the unfolding of miscalculations.
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The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.
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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
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Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.
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Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control.
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The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution.
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
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What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact.
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When reproached for spending too much time with books and clerks, Charles answered, 'As long as knowledge is honored in this country, so long will it prosper.'
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Chroniclers habitually matched numbers to the awesomeness of the event.
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That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.
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Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.
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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.
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Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, 'no epoch was more naturally mad.'