Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.
BARBARA TUCHMANChief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as “the most flagrant of all the passions.” Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Of all the ills that our poor … society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.
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The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
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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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A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
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In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth.
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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
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Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
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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.
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For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
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No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.
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To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
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I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
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When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
BARBARA TUCHMAN