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Barbara Tuchman

Barbara Tuchman Quotes

Historian

Barbara Tuchman was an American historian renowned for her in-depth research and vivid narrative style. Her works covered historical events from the Roman Empire to the 20th century, with 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' and 'The Guns of August' being particularly notable.

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Famous Barbara Tuchman Quotes

“It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.”

Way Firsts Believe Facts Form I Believe Process Cases Atheism Theory Evidence Historical Positive Atheism Narrative Wiser Accord Emerging Generalization Arranging

Book:Practicing History: Selected Essays

Source: Practicing History: Selected Essays

“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. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

Source: The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.”

Mind Long Facts Government Term Childhood Information Policy Fit Intention Notion Makers Baggage Preconceptions Policy Makers

Author:Barbara Tuchman

“The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.”

Facts Development Ten Increase Tragedy Factors Journalism

Author:Barbara Tuchman

“After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena.”

World Two Facts Home Today School Faces Water Crime Broken Drug Lucky News Train Strikes Evening Coming Home Nazi Addict Absorbing Drug Addict Muggers Lucky Day Power Failure

Author:Barbara Tuchman

“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.”

Has Beens Facts Seems Records Accounts Disaster Sporadic

Book:A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Source: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

“What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.”

Art Facts Imagination Poet Exercise Judgment Historian Arrangements Selection

Book:Practicing History: Selected Essays

Source: Practicing History: Selected Essays