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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ff8b346 | No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society. | culture overgeneralization remnant | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| b4a9fb3 | For his son-in-law the Pope suffered no further spasms of morality. Rather, judging from Burchard's diary, the last inhibitions, if any, dropped away. Two months after Alfonso's death, the Pope presided over a banquet given by Cesare in the Vatican, famous in the annals of pornography as the Ballet of the Chestnuts. Soberly recorded by Burchard, fifty courtesans danced after dinner with the guests, "at first clothed, then naked." Chestnuts .. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| a09bb11 | the thing you contend for to be reason," Burke had said, "show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please." | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 6e9f48f | If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!" lamented Samuel Coleridge. "But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us." The image is beautiful but" | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| a6171de | In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense. | writing-process | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| e7c5186 | Despised as ineffective, they were ineffective because they were despised. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| b13d147 | Within the army, field officers despised Staff officers as "having the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam," but both groups were as one in their distaste for interference by civilian ministers who were known as "the frocks." The civil arm in its turn referred to the military as "the boneheads." | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| af0e490 | fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 46626b6 | with that characteristic touch of late-Romanov rashness, the government, by ukase of August 22, extended prohibition for the duration of the war. As the sale of vodka was a state monopoly, this act at one stroke cut off a third of the government's income. It was well known, commented a bewildered member of the Duma, that governments waging war seek by a variety of taxes and levies to increase income, "but never since the dawn of history has.. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 6a917c9 | Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it." -- | discipleship group-think ideology party politics | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| da0bfa7 | Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to "receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land." | discipleship identity nationalism | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 9086e13 | The scene is France. The theater is the world. | evangelism testimony | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 3d34417 | Party animosity was concealed under a veil of studied courtesy. | manners statesmanship | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 257c774 | If they are afraid of revision in the laboratory, truth will never be released except by accident. | openness | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| e3d12e4 | He was the most persuasive speaker, less for his words than character behind them. He made every listener feel he had done his best to master every aspect of this question, who has been driven by logic to arrive at certain conclusions, and who is disguising from us no argument on either side. | statesmanship | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 38de519 | One aristocratic leader's club was known for, "an atmosphere of solemn tranquility, in which reading, dozing, and meditation took precedence over conversation." | thought-life | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| be5c3a2 | Each one of us is serious individually, but together we become frivolous. | distraction peer-pressure | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 901ae71 | A reformer exhorted children that they would succeed where he and his colleagues had failed with the charge: "Live for that better day." | education heritage vision | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 7495e1c | Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age. | culture depravity perspective | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 8a870c4 | In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great. | democracy manipulation materialism perspective | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| bcf8383 | Henry Adams, like most people, saw society in his own image. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 5e8f01e | William McKinley was a man made to be managed. | manipulation popularity | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 86f4258 | Mankind's tragedy is that he can draw up blueprints for a better life but he cannot live up to them. | disillusionment idealism | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 7ebee32 | The English patrician bloomed in his natural climate. | conventional-wisdom heritage | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| bac5f00 | Of England's patrician class, the author writes: "It was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease." | elitism idolatry | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| c329b8b | Isolation might be more hazardous than splendor. | assumptions loneliness self-indulgence | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 378488e | Everything interested him and everything excited him. | communication curiosity education leadership | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 7d3a5a1 | Its Seventh Commandment, italicized by the authors, stated: "Battles are beyond everything else struggles of morale. Defeat is inevitable as soon as the hope of conquering ceases to exist. Success comes not to him who has suffered the least but to him whose will is firmest and morale strongest." | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| daf721d | is more unfair," as an English historian has well said, "than to judge men of the past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality, political wisdom is certainly ambulatory." | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 39cff99 | His decision suggests that an absence of overriding personal ambition together with shrewd common sense are among the essential components of wisdom. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| bacc0f9 | Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry, and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 4874eba | When a pope's election could not be explained rationally, it was attributed to the Holy Ghost. | rationalization superstition | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 46a50f0 | The attitude was a sense of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable. A feeling of this kind leads to ignorance of the world and of others because it suppresses curiosity. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| b78aea5 | Although 1870 proved the corollary of the theory and practice of terror, that it deepens antagonism, stimulates resistance, and ends by lengthening war, the Germans remained wedded to it. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| a7f2867 | Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government. | culture | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 44709be | The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable." | insularity prejudice pride racism | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| a09a2b7 | Because life was collective, it was intensely sociable and dependent on etiquette, hence the emphasis on courteous conduct and clean fingernails. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 8d6078f | Fine dressing could not be suppressed despite ever-renewed sumptuary laws which tried especially and repeatedly to outlaw the pointed shoes. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| c295c95 | The feelings of the men who had raised Urban over their own heads probably cannot be adequately described. Some thought that the delirium of power had made the Pope furiosus et melaneholicus--in short, mad. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 5a17fa5 | Money was evil, beauty vain, and both were transitory. Ambition was pride, desire for gain was avarice, desire of the flesh was lust, desire for honor, even for knowledge and beauty, was vainglory. Insofar as these diverted man from seeking the life of the spirit, they were sinful. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 0c11cc2 | The amount the rich could squander on occasions like these in a period of repeated disasters appears inexplicable, not so much with regard to motive as with regard to means. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 7df4460 | In a long and fiercely argued process, against the strenuous resistance of the peers, he ordered the Sire de Coucy to stand trial. Enguerrand IV was convicted, and although the King intended a death sentence, he was persuaded by the peers to forgo it. Enguerrand was sentenced to pay a fine of 12,000 livres, to be used partly to endow masses in perpetuity for the souls of the men he had hanged, and partly to be sent to Acre to aid in the def.. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| d461c73 | Every incident in the Old Testament was considered to pre-figure in allegory what was to come in the New. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| a42cab9 | According to then current laws of war, the besieged could make terms if they surrendered, but not if they forced a siege to its bitter end, so presumably Charles felt no compunctions. | Barbara W. Tuchman |