Home / Quotes / Quote by Barbara Tuchman

Quote by Barbara Tuchman

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

Author

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

“War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.”

Source: Physics and Politics, Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration.”

Source: Thoughts on parliamentary reform. Recent writers on reform. Bain's psychology. A few words on non-intervention. The contest in America. Austin on jurisprudence. Plato

“War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.”

May War Situation Accepted Ignored

Book:The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems

Source: The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems

“War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.”

War Drama Supreme

Book:Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization

“War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”