Barbara W. Tuchman

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip. ”

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

If a man is a writer, everybody tiptoes around past the locked door of the breadwinner. But if you're an ordinary female housewife, people say, 'This is just something Barbara wanted to do; it's not professional.' ”

Honor wears different coats to different eyes. ”

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

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in. ”

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. ”

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost. ”

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision. ”

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. ”