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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

Barbara Tuchman

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Barbara Tuchman
Historian
Library
Food
Even
Libraries
Muse
Shelter

More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
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Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.
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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
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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.
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The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
Barbara Tuchman
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
Barbara Tuchman
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In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.
Barbara Tuchman
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If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
Barbara Tuchman
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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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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
Barbara Tuchman
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Books are humanity in print.
Barbara Tuchman
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Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.
Barbara Tuchman
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Governments do not like to face radical remedies it is easier to let politics predominate.
Barbara Tuchman
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Human behavior is timeless.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
Barbara Tuchman
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
Barbara Tuchman
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Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.
Barbara Tuchman