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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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Barbara Tuchman
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
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The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
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I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
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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.
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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.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
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Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.
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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.
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No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
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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.
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If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
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To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
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While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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