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 TUCHMANThe reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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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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When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
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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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
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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.
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
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Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
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Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.
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A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
BARBARA TUCHMAN