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The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.

Barbara Tuchman

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Barbara Tuchman
Almost
Action
Power
Always
Irrepressible
Humankind
Appetite
Destructive

More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
Barbara Tuchman
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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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Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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.
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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
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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The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
Barbara Tuchman
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Human behavior is timeless.
Barbara Tuchman
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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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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
Barbara Tuchman
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Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
Barbara Tuchman
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satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
Barbara Tuchman