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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

Barbara Tuchman

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
[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Century Emotion Pain
The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Attention Men Untrustworthy
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Action Appetite Power
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Communism Communist Myth
Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Christianity Ideas
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Compromise Power Weakness
Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Mean Power Secret
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Appreciation Common Sense Wisdom
Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heels Jackals War
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Comfort Military Mind
Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

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

Anxiety Christian Giving
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Interesting Prevention War
Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Humanity
The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Challenges Money Waiting
To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Order Original Thought
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
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
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Hindsight Midst War
An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Essentials Sound Writing
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Discard Irrelevant Matters
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History People Poetry
It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Atheism Believe Historical
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
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Desire Women Worry

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

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