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If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.

Barbara Tuchman

To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Communication Quality
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Closing Doors Library
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
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Discard Irrelevant Matters
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Accepting Calm Supplies
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Faculty Learning Teaching
Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Demand Discipline Order
Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Eradicable Matter Sex Sin
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
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
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Belief Friendship Roots
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Argument Desire Found
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Dominion Kind Motorcycle Power Success
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Literature History
I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Always Condition Writer Writing
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Library Muse Shelter

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.

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If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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