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 TUCHMANCompleteness is rare in history.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
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More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
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Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
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The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
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Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
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The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
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Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
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If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
BARBARA TUCHMAN