Frases de Barbara Tuchman

“Lo que la imaginación es para el poeta, son los hechos para el historiador.”

“El objetivo del escritor es -o debería ser- mantener la atención del lector.”

“El pasado no registrado no es más que nuestro viejo amigo, ese árbol del bosque primitivo que cayó sin ser oído.”

“Para un historiador las bibliotecas son el alimento, el refugio, e incluso la inspiración. Las hay de dos tipos: las bibliotecas de materiales publicados, libros, folletos, publicaciones periódicas; y los archivos de documentos inéditos.”

“Apartar los propios pensamientos originales con el fin de tomar un libro es un pecado contra el Espíritu Santo.”

Fuente: Citas de Barbara Tuchman. http://www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=593&page=3 QOTD.org

“La vanagloria…, por mucho que el cristianismo medieval insistía en que era un pecado, es un motor de la humanidad, no más erradicable que el sexo.”

Barbara Tuchman Frases y Citas

Barbara Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: Barbara W. Tuchman: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978)

“La guerra es el despliegue de los errores de juicio.”

“Parece que estamos afectados por una renuencia y deterioro generalizados para no tomar ninguna postura sobre los valores morales, de comportamiento o estéticos.”

“Cuando la brecha entre el ideal y lo real es demasiado amplia, el sistema se viene abajo.”

“Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.”

Barbara Tuchman: Frases en inglés

“History is the unfolding of miscalculations.”

Fuente: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

“That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.”

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, p. 132 (1970)

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

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 6

“Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced”

Variante: Books are... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.

“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.”

“The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro The Guns of August

Fuente: The Guns of August

“The real reason for his attitude lay deeper. Essentially, Gloucester and the barons of his party were opposed to peace because they felt war to be their occupation. Behind them were the poorer knights and squires and archers of England, who, unconcerned with rights or wrongs, were “inclined to war such as had been their livelihood.””

Barbara W. Tuchman libro The Guns of August

Fuente: The Guns of August

“If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 490

“The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Jean Gerson, quoted on p. 520
A Distant Mirror (1978)

“Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 590

“On being shown a relic said to be a bone of St. Elizabeth, he (Sigismund) turned it over and remarked that it could just as well be that of a dead cobbler.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 273

“In the midst of events there is no perspective.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 542

“For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 454

“The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 426

“Left to face a hungry winter robbed of their hard-earned harvests, the people experienced their own warrior class not as protectors but ravagers.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 412

“Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 141

“In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 469

“The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 210

“His (Deschamps’) complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 581

“Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 450

“Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 577

“What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 81

“Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 291

“When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Enguerrand VII de Coucy, quoted on p. 570
A Distant Mirror (1978)

“Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Admiral Jean de Vienne, quoted on p. 559
A Distant Mirror (1978)

“Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 487

“If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 523

“As the era of the sword was ending, that of firearms began, in time to allow no lapse in man’s belligerent capacity.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 375

“To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.”

Barbara W. Tuchman libro A Distant Mirror

Fuente: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 585