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Quote by Barbara Tuchman

“The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.”

Quote by Barbara Tuchman

Book:Practicing History: Selected Essays

Work

Practicing History: Selected Essays

This book compiles a series of essays that delve into the methodologies and approaches used in the study of history. more

Author

Barbara Tuchman

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. more

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“The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.”

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Book:Practicing History: Selected Essays

Source: Practicing History: Selected Essays

“We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.”

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“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.”

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Book:Practicing History: Selected Essays

Source: Practicing History: Selected Essays

“Astronauts: space activists.”

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“For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing single-handedly a half a ton of angry pot roast!”

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“I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.”

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“I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record.”

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“I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. And that's not funny.”

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“One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.”

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“The audience usually has to be with you, I'm afraid. I always regarded myself as not even preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted.”

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Author:Tom Lehrer