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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
Action
Power
Always
Irrepressible
Humankind
Appetite
Destructive
Almost

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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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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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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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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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Governments do not like to face radical remedies it is easier to let politics predominate.
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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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Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
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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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satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
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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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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
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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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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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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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The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
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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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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 costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
Barbara Tuchman