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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

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
Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Behavior Human Timeless
The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conflict Differences Planets
For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

People Reform relief
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Breaking Down Gaps Real
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Belief Friendship Roots
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
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Library Muse Shelter
The whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Country Money More Prevail Property
Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Development Impossible
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
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Argument Desire Found
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind
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
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Easier Faces Government
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Authority Common Should

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Tuchman Quotes