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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

Barbara Tuchman

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
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
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Action Appetite Power
The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Cause Command Thinking
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Breaking Down Gaps Real
Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Age Bad Time Needs
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Communication Quality
We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Moral Reluctance Seems
The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Humanity Ideas Years
While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Husband Men Stories
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
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
The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Poison Running War
Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Humanity Print
bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Errors Forever Yesterday
The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Despair Light Past
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conducting Finished Research
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
When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Effort Interesting People
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Church Numbers Self
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Interesting Prevention War
If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Courage Elude Mistake
They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Banker Companion Erect Lighthouse Magician Sea Teacher
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Satisfying Sentences Writing
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
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Development Facts Tragedy

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

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