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 TUCHMANNothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
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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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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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An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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In the midst of events there is no perspective.
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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 -
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
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If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
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Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.
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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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One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
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Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.
BARBARA TUCHMAN