Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
BARBARA TUCHMANDead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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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.
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To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
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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.
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To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
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The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
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The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
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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.
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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.
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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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.
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We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
BARBARA TUCHMAN