Barbara Tuchman
American · 1912–1989
American historian and author, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for The Guns of August and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, renowned for her vivid narrative style and analysis of political folly.
Wikipedia ↗“War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”
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“Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.”
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“The two World Wars of the 20th century were essentially European civil wars — the final, suicidal phase of European world dominance.”
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“Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.”
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“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”
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“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs.”
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“The folly consisted not in the pursuit of self-interest but in the refusal to recognize when self-interest was being damaged by one's own policies.”
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