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Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

Barbara Tuchman

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Giving Men Struggle
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Decision Faces Government
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Fighting History Police
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
No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Eyebrows Female Habit
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Church Little
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Alternatives Elements Eras
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Easier Faces Government
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
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Argument Desire Found
The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Complicated Question Reality Suppose
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Appreciation Common Sense Wisdom
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
Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Different Eye Honor
I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Pages Want Writing

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

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Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

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Popular Authors

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