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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.

Barbara Tuchman

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

Dominion Kind Motorcycle Power Success
Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Behavior Human Timeless
More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Knighthood Love War
That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Age Conflict Problem
The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Cause Command Thinking
Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Doctrine Reality Sex
Woman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Church Devil Women
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
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
Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Danger Ingredients Missing
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Library Muse Shelter
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Argument Desire Found
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Female Males Sin
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Barbarians Loss Thinking
When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Commerce Massacres Zeal
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind

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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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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