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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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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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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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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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The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
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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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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
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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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bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.
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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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More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
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To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
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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.
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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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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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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.
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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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The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
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Governments do not like to face radical remedies it is easier to let politics predominate.
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Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
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