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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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Barbara Tuchman
Never
Conducting
Finish
Otherwise
Finished
Research
Stop
Must

More quotes by 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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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
Barbara Tuchman
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To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
Barbara Tuchman
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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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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Barbara Tuchman
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Above all, discard the irrelevant.
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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Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.
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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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
Barbara Tuchman
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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
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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.
Barbara Tuchman
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Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
Barbara Tuchman
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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 be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
Barbara Tuchman
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Books are humanity in print.
Barbara Tuchman