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 TUCHMANDoctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
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Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.
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The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
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For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.
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The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
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The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
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I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?
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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN