Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
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That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
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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.
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.
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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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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Woman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.
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Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
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In the midst of events there is no perspective.
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The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
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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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN






