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Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.

Barbara Tuchman

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

Anxiety Christian Giving
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Cooking Material Publish Two
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Battle Military Mind
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Accepting Calm Supplies
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Completeness History Rare
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Government Periods Pursuit
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
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 open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Challenges Money Waiting
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
In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Contempt Country Law States United
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
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
If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Earth Ideas Medieval
Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Country Men Opponent Smart
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Literature History

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.

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Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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