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

Barbara Tuchman

Chief 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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Exercise Passion Successful
Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Doctrine Reality Sex
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Closing Doors Library
I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Artist Book Fiction Reason
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Fighting History Police
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History Sea War
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Revolution Successful Tyrants
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Cards House Leaving
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
Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Different Eye Honor
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Folly Men Power
It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Atheism Believe Historical
Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Behavior Human Timeless
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Church Numbers Self
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Giving Men Struggle

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

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

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