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The power to command frequently causes failure to think.

Barbara Tuchman

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

Folly Men Power
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Female Males Sin
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
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
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Discard Irrelevant Matters
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
Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Heels Jackals War
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
What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Exercise Imagination
Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Confronted Government Menace Smash
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
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Communication Quality
Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Doctrine Reality Sex
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conducting Finished Research
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Disaster Facts Records
The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History Sea War

The power to command frequently causes failure to think.

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The power to command frequently causes failure to think.

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