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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

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

Female Males Sin
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Battle Military Mind
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Appreciation Common Sense Wisdom
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Communism Communist Myth
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Belief Century Church
Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heels Jackals War
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Firsts Garment Legitimacy
The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Attention Object Reader
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind
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
While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Husband Men Stories
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Decision Faces Government
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History People Poetry
Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Christianity Ideas
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Development Facts Tragedy
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History Sea War

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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