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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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Barbara Tuchman
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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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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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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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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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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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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Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
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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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The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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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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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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