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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Barbara Tuchman

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Barbara Tuchman
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More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
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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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Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.
Barbara Tuchman
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To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
Barbara Tuchman
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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
Barbara Tuchman
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
Barbara Tuchman
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No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.
Barbara Tuchman
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Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
Barbara Tuchman
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When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
Barbara Tuchman
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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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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More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
Barbara Tuchman
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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
Barbara Tuchman
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Barbara Tuchman
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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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One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Barbara Tuchman
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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
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That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
Barbara Tuchman