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For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

Barbara Tuchman

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
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
No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Eyebrows Female Habit
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
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Discard Irrelevant Matters
Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Danger Ingredients Missing
No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Country Small Space Urgent World
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
The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conflict Differences Planets
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Female Males Sin
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Breaking Down Gaps Real
To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Forgiven Position Responsible
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heard Presumption Reason
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
No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Capitalist Economy Sin Usury
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Giving Men Struggle

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

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For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

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Popular Authors

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