War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMANMoney 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.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.
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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.
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The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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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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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.
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Completeness is rare in history.
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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.
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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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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
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The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
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The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN