black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

Barbara Tuchman

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
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
Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Confronted Government Menace Smash
The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Challenges Money Waiting
The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Unity War Years
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Appreciation Common Sense Wisdom
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
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
If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Courage Elude Mistake
Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Christianity Ideas
Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Humanity
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Faculty Learning Teaching
No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Europe War World
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
Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Disease Views Years
Of all the ills that our poor … society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Absence Confusion Heirs

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Tuchman Quotes