Barbara W. Tuchman

“Books are the carriers of civilization...They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

“Philip bullied the first Avignon Pope, Clement V, into authorizing the trials of the Templars, and with this authority put them to atrocious tortures to extract confessions. Medieval justice...”

“Books are humanity in print.”

“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.”

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

“Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.”

“Honor wears different coats to different eyes.”

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”

“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.”

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

“After the war, when my husband came home, we had two more children, and domesticity for a while prevailed combined with beginning the work I had always wanted to do, which was writing a book...”

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

“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.”