Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
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Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.
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One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
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Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
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The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
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Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
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For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
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Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
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Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.
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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.
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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.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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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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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?
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War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
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When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth.
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Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
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I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
BARBARA TUCHMAN