Barbara Tuchman Quotes

As great as kings may be, they are what we are: they can err like other men.

No man is infallible.

I'm not a God, I make mistakes.

There is risk everywhere. Being alive carries the risk of death.

I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.

I think when you see an aircraft fire, these angry, black puffs of smoke, knowing that one of them could kill you that you - you - you understand the seriousness of the mission. And you understand your own mortality.

The human condition is not perfect. We are not perfect specimens, any of us. We're not robots.

There is no bullet-proof vest in my size.

If generations past could get things so badly wrong, then we are forever vulnerable as well, and the moral utility of history may well lie in its capacity to remind ourselves that we qre always at risk of falling short in the unendng search to perfect the union.

If generations past could get things so badly wrong, then we are forever vulnerable as well.

I am human, and of course I can make mistakes, even if nobody allows them.

For better or worse, I am as fascinated with human flaws as anything.

Look, there’s nothing I’m ever going to tell you about me that’s the truth. The more you know about me, the shorter your life span is going to be. All you need to know is that I don’t miss. In fact, you don’t even need to know exactly how good I really am, because if you ever find out, you’re going to be dead. (Steele)

I do not believe in evil- I believe that we are human and fallible, that we things and spoil them in an ordinary way.

It's all right to make mistakes, you're only humanInside everybody's hiding something.

The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how--usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep.

You're never too young to die.

You're safe only when you can't see anybody.

There is no safety in regaining the favor of an enemy.

As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Everyone is a threat, and anyone can be beat at any given moment. No one is invincible.

...the little man's total obliviousness to all forms of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away.

[L]eave nothing to the uncertainty of procuring a warlike apparatus at the moment of public danger.

It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.