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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

Barbara Tuchman

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
For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Purpose Technology Use
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Hindsight Midst War
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conducting Finished Research
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
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Government Periods Pursuit
The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Unity War Years
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Compromise Power Weakness
The whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Country Money More Prevail Property
Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Mean Power Secret
To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Order Original Thought
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Historical History Peace
The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Despair Light Past
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Faculty Learning Teaching
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Easier Faces Government
To explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conduct Human Irrational Phenomena Strange

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

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