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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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Barbara Tuchman
Pervaded
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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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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
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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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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.
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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
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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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In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
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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 unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
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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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The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
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Completeness is rare in history.
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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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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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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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