The First Salute Quotes

“Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannon.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“Pessimism is a primary source of passivity,”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“Ending a war is a difficult and delicate business. Even intelligent rulers, when they exist, often find themselves unable to terminate a war, should they want to. Each side must become convinced at the same time and with equal certainty that its war aim is either not achievable or not worth the cost or damage to the state.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Revolutions produce other men, not new men. Halfway between truth and endless error, the mold of the species is permanent. That is Earth's burden.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“Command, deprived of personal judgment, can win no battles.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“It was one of the peculiar malfunctions of technology that shore batteries on the islands were generally of inadequate caliber and range to knock out a ship approaching with hostile intent. One is moved to wonder why, if a 10-pounder gun could be mounted on the rolling deck of a sailing vessel, the same or larger could not be mounted on land?”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose. It created the impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in the wearer which has been lost sight of in our nervously egalitarian times.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“It must always be an amazement how 18th century letter writers - even, and especially, officials - had the time and capacity to produce their sculpted sentences and perfection of grammar and mots justes, while 20th century successors can only envy the past and leave their readers painfully to pick their way through thickets of academic and the mud of bureaucratic jargon.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard’s chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, “Quarter! quarter! for God’s sake!” Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis’ commander, who called, “Do you ask for quarter?” Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: “I have not yet begun to fight!” Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the Serapis’ mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to Richard’s quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the Serapis’ mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“To plunge into passionate dispute over the trivialities of so-called honor is a queerer but not uncommon gambit of men who have just come from putting their lives at stake in serious combat,”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“The city had 72 straight, wide and well-built streets and sidewalks. The Congress meeting hall has the “finest view imaginable,” and there is a “very famous College with the title of University” (the present University of Pennsylvania). At the home of Joseph Reed, “President of the State [sic] of Pennsylvania,” the visitors are entertained at a ceremonial dinner of which the main feature was an immense ninety-pound turtle with soup served in its shell.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Two hundred years of human aggression, greed and the madness of power reveal a record that blots the rejoicing of that happy night in Philadelphia, and reminds us how slow is the pace of “melioration” and how mediocre is the best we have made of what Washington and Greene and Morgan and their half-clad soldiers “without the shadow of a blanket” fought through bitter winters to achieve.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Contempt of the defeated for the victor, seemingly a perverse response, is a loser’s sentiment—denying admission of its own fault or failure and believing itself robbed of victory by some malign mischance, as in sports when a gust of wind might divert the throw of a ball, giving victory to the opponent.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“It is very difficult for a recipient of secret information to believe its validity when it does not conform to his preconceived plans or ideas; he believes what he wants to believe and rejects what does not verify what he already knows, or thinks he knows.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“The danger in complacency is that it causes the possessor to ignore as unimportant the local factors and conditions that govern other people with whom it deals.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Complacency is an attribute of long-retained power like that of the Chinese.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“As in older and later empires, resources were not equal to the overextension of the imperial reach.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“When the party system regulates, argument addresses the deaf.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“Henry Lee’s path-breaking resolution in Congress in June, 1776, “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution

“On October 17, the day when Cornwallis, heralded by his little drummer boy, asked for terms, his would-be rescuers in New York, Graves and Clinton, setting a record for belated action in military history, finally fixed a time to leave on the mission that had been waiting ever since Clinton had acknowledged on September 2 that Cornwallis would have to be "saved." An army of 7,000 was boarded, sails were hoisted, Graves' fleet with Clinton on board moved slowly down the Hudson. They crossed the Hook on October 19, on the same day when, in Yorktown, Washington and Cornwallis signed and accepted the terms of surrender. Five days later, October 24, they were off Cape Charles without encountering the feared interference from de Grasse, who had no reason to risk battle for a cause already won. While small craft scuttled through the bay seeking news, a boat came out from the York to tell the tale. Time had not waited; the door was closed. All the expense and armed force exerted for nearly six years had gone for nothing. No victory, no glory, no restored rulership. As a war, it was the historic rebuke to complacency.

The two masters of lethargy, Admiral and General, with their 35 ships and 7,000 men turned around and sailed back uselessly to New York.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“... the French, who had put large expectations in the abasement of Britain that American success would cause, had been disappointed by the weakness of the American military effort. Instead of an aggressive ally, they were tied to a dependent client, unable to establish a strong government and requiring transfusions of men-at-arms and money to keep its war effort alive.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“The lesson was not yet clear in the 18th century, as America was to learn to her cost in our own century, that the presence of disunity in the military about method and strategy, and among the nation's people about the rightness of the war aim, makes it impossible for a war of any duration to be fought effectively and won.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“Adams, not yet replaced, repeated that "the arrogant English were treating Amsterdam exactly as they had Boston." With that fatal gift for the unlearned lesson, the produced the same result - unity against the oppressor, which in America had brought the fractious colonies into their first federation.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“The Brunswick Manifesto, rather than accomplishing Louis XVI's rescue, paved the way to the guillotine, which could have been foreseen if Karl Wilhelm had given the matter any forethought, but thinking ahead is given to chess players, not to autocrats.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“William III died childless in 1702, in a fall when his horse stumbled over a molehill, an obstacle that seems as if it should have some philosophical significance but, as far as can be seen, does not.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution