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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
Humankind
Appetite
Destructive
Almost
Action
Power
Always
Irrepressible

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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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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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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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While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
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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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If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
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Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
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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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Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
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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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Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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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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Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
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The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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Governments do not like to face radical remedies it is easier to let politics predominate.
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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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