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

Barbara Tuchman

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

Complicated Question Reality Suppose
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

Barbarians Loss Thinking
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conducting Finished Research
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Attention Men Untrustworthy
I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Pages Want Writing
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Events Midst Perspective
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Authority Common Should
Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as “the most flagrant of all the passions.” Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Exercise Passion Successful
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heard Presumption Reason
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Argument Desire Found
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
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Fighting History Police
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Firsts Garment Legitimacy
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?
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Earth Ideas Medieval
Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Christianity Ideas

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

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

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Popular Authors

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