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They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

Barbara Tuchman

Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Behavior Human Timeless
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Decision Faces Government
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Breaking Down Gaps Real
The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Complicated Question Reality Suppose
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Communism Communist Myth
For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Cards House Leaving
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Reading Stupid
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Communication Quality
While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Husband Men Stories
Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Demand Discipline Order
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Accepting Calm Supplies
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Anxiety Christian Giving
The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Unity War Years
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Action Appetite Power
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Library Muse Shelter
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Government Periods Pursuit

They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

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They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Tuchman Quotes