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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

Barbara Tuchman

I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Always Condition Writer Writing
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heard Presumption Reason
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Easier Faces Government
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
What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Exercise Imagination
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Revolution Successful Tyrants
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Authority Common Should
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History Past Tree
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Discard Irrelevant Matters
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Anxiety Christian Giving
If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Degrees Taken Writing
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Faculty Learning Teaching
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Events Midst Perspective
The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Challenges Money Waiting
Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Different Eye Honor
No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Capitalist Economy Sin Usury

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

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Popular Authors

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