Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes
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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. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success.
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The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
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Left to face a hungry winter robbed of their hard-earned harvests, the people experienced their own warrior class not as protectors but ravagers.
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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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When the children were very small, I worked in the morning only, and then gradually, as they spent full days at school, I could spend full days at work.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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The system was aided by the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek.
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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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If a man is a writer, everybody tiptoes around past the locked door of the breadwinner. But if you're an ordinary female housewife, people say, 'This is just something Barbara wanted to do; it's not professional.'
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In the midst of events there is no perspective.
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On being shown a relic said to be a bone of St. Elizabeth, he (Sigismund) turned it over and remarked that it could just as well be that of a dead cobbler.
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Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
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As the era of the sword was ending, that of firearms began, in time to allow no lapse in man’s belligerent capacity.
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After the war, when my husband came home, we had two more children, and domesticity for a while prevailed combined with beginning the work I had always wanted to do, which was writing a book.
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To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.
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For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
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I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end.
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Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
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If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?
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Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
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What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?
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His (Deschamps’) complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.