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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 Tuchman

In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Contempt Country Law States United
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Accepting Calm Supplies
I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Always Condition Writer Writing
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Satisfying Sentences Writing
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Completeness History Rare
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Historical History Peace
Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heels Jackals War
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Compromise Power Weakness
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
Of all the ills that our poor … society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Absence Confusion Heirs
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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Cooking Material Publish Two
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 TUCHMAN

Cost Pay War
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Appreciation Common Sense Wisdom
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
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 TUCHMAN

Purpose Technology Use
For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

People Reform relief

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.

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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.

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