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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

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Communism Communist Myth
I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Pages Want Writing
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Closing Doors Library
The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Unity War Years
Woman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Church Devil Women
Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Hard Stories Telephone Work
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind
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
When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Effort Interesting People
The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Complicated Question Reality Suppose
Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Disease Views Years
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Completeness History Rare
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Alternatives Elements Eras
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

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

Female Males Sin

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.

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Popular Authors

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