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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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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.
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The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
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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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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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
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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.
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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.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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Completeness is rare in history.
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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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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satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
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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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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
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Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
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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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To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Barbara Tuchman
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Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.
Barbara Tuchman