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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 51710e9 | Inventive rhetoric is characteristic of true believers. | self-delusion | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| ea84165 | The turn of events in Belgium was a product of the German theory of terror. Clausewitz had prescribed terror as the proper method to shorten war, his whole theory of war being based on the necessity of making it short, sharp, and decisive. The civil population must not be exempted from war's effects but must be made to feel its pressure and be forced by the severest measures to compel their leaders to make peace. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 87a3366 | Would the fate of China have been different if Stilwell had been allowed to reform the army and create an effective combat force of 90 divisions? ... This assumption might have been true if Asia were clay in the hands of the West. But the"regenerative idea," stilwell's or another's, could not be imposed from the outside. The Kuomintang military structure could not be reformed without reform of the system from which it sprang and, as Stillwe.. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 5889cab | If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers. | writers writing | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 84d0639 | Evaluation of enemy strength is not an absolute, but a matter of piecing together scraps of reconnaissance and intelligence to form a picture, if possible a picture to fit preconceived theories or to suit the demands of a particular strategy. What a staff makes out of the available evidence depends upon the degree of optimism or pessimism prevailing among them, on what they want to believe or fear to believe, and sometimes upon the sensitiv.. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 2eab168 | Although the mortality rate was erratic, ranging from one fifth in some places to nine tenths or almost total elimination in others, the overall estimate of modern demographers has settled--for the area extending from India to Iceland--around the same figure expressed in Froissart's casual words: "a third of the world died." | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| fc9b31a | Very devout like his great-grandfather St. Louis, though not his equal in intelligence or will, Philip was fascinated by the all-absorbing question of the Beatific Vision: whether the souls of the blessed see the face of God immediately upon entering Heaven or whether they have to wait until the Day of Judgment. The question was of real concern because the intercession of the saints on behalf of man was effective only if they had been admit.. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| c32d895 | For, as Professor Turner has pointed out, "history originated as myth" and becomes a "social memory" to which men can appeal, "knowing it will provide justification for their present actions or convictions." If" -- | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 152a574 | Have we," he wondered, "conceived a merely human project and then imagined it to be a decree of the Almighty?" | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 2303716 | Guides were Franciscan monks, sole custodians of the holy places after 1230, who recited the history and traditions associated with each town or monument or site of Biblical events to parties of visitors as they arrived. More | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 8bd8d01 | Persian poet said, the rose blooms reddest where some buried Caesar bled. The | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 7e7892e | Inevitably, as hatred of monarchy was added to hatred of episcopacy, they were led to republicanism. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| e9c0a9e | The road to India, the Suez Canal, the oil fields of Mosul, the whole complex of political and strategic requirements that drew Britain into Palestine in 1918, began with the enterprise of the Elizabethan merchant adventurers. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| e6eea75 | The author of IRR, who worshipped the King, said he had the valor of Hector, the magnanimity of Achilles, the liberality of Titus, the eloquence of Nestor, and the prudence of Ulysses; that he was the equal of Alexander and not inferior to Roland. But later historians tend to picture him rather as a remorseless, kindless villain. He was probably not a pleasant or a lovable character; none of the Plantagenets were. But a great soldier and a .. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 11de8de | TO BE "THE SEWER OF CHRISTENDOM and drain all the discords out of it" was the primary function of the Crusades," | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 0744919 | Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| fa563cc | But with that burst of the fairness that he can never repress, he admits that conversion is unlikely as long as Christians exclude Jews from the community: "There must be first conversing with them before there can be converting them." | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 1e69066 | Between policy-makers in the capital and realities in the field lies an eternal gap whitened by the bones of failed and futile efforts. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 6f3c614 | This was the Evangelical Revival that now began to take hold on the propertied class, who, frightened by what was happening in France, were anxiously mending their fences, spiritual as well as political. To escape rationalism's horrid daughter, revolution, they were only too willing to be enfolded in the anti-intellectual embrace of Evangelicalism, even if it demanded faith and good works and a willing suspension of disbelief. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| dba4394 | Puritanism, he said, was a reaction to the loss of moral fiber that accompanied the Renaissance. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 55c11d4 | The history of the Jews is...intensely peculiar in the fact of having given the Western world its concept of origins and monotheism, its ethical traditions, and the founder of its prevailing religion, yet suffering dispersion, statelessness, and ceaseless persecution, and finally in our times nearly successful genocide, dramatically followed by fulfillment of the never-relinquished ream of return to their homeland. Viewing this strange and .. | israel | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| 34e4fa5 | It is clearer now that no anti-Semitic government in any country has ever helped its scapegoats to leave by any other door than death. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 274929e | Cromwell. The door was flung open. In stalked the Protector, disgusted once more with the inability of human weaklings to come to the point, to get action, to see what he wanted and let him have it. Was it not, he berated them, every Christian's duty to receive the Jews into England, the only nation where religion was taught in its full purity, and "not to exclude them from the light and leave them among false teachers, Papists and idolater.. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 716362e | It is a feature of government that the more important the problem, the further it tends to be removed from handling by anyone well acquainted with the subject. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 7fc14cd | It might be the destiny of the Jewish race," he said, "to be the bridge between Asia and Europe, to bring the spirituality of Asia to Europe and the vitality of Europe to Asia." At" | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 0f9f5a9 | Wherever the Reformation took hold the Bible replaced the Pope as the final spiritual authority. | Barbara W. Tuchman | ||
| 65ec7a0 | We don't want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 4f9f21a | As to industrial conditions, however, Babbitt had thought a great deal, and his opinions may be coordinated as follows: "A good labor union is of value because it keeps out radical unions, which would destroy property. No one ought to be forced to belong to a union, however. All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union should be hanged. In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all; and as it's .. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| fc1c924 | So much of a revolution for so many people is nothing but waiting. That is one reason why tourists rarely see anything but contentment in a crushed population. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| e2a43d1 | In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business administration ! | politics-of-the-united-states | Sinclair Lewis | |
| c08e3bf | More and more, as I think about history," he pondered, "I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever." *" | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 1bdc6e2 | He called himself an "agnostic" instead of an "atheist" only because he detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelicism of the professional atheists." | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 7aaf958 | preachers and modernist educators and discontented newspapermen and farm agitators--maybe they'll worry at first, but they'll get caught up in the web of propaganda, like we all were in the Great War, and they'll all be convinced that, even if our Buzzy maybe has got a few faults, he's on the side of the plain people, and against all the tight old political machines, and they'll rouse the country for him as the Great Liberator (and meanwhil.. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 8afe31f | world." "I love her for being so happy," Carol brooded. "I ought to be that way. I worship the baby, but the housework----Oh, I suppose I'm fortunate; so much better off than farm-women on a new clearing, or people in a slum." It" | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 83b2a13 | Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 248a914 | Albert Einstein, who had been exiled from Germany for his guilty devotion to mathematics, world peace, and the violin, was now exiled from America for the same crimes. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 0157005 | He stopped smoking at least once a month. He went through with it like the solid citizen he was: admitted the evils of tobacco, courageously made resolves, laid out plans to check the vice, tapered off his allowance of cigars, and expounded the pleasures of virtuousness to every one he met. He did everything, in fact, except stop smoking. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| b5ad2f9 | flight from familiar tedium to new tedium would have for a time the outer look and promise of adventure. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 5b07d53 | All Negroes shall be prohibited from voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may earn or in any other manner receive. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 2aacbce | He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate spaghetti. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 04d8c1d | Say, I swear the best Messiah in the whole show is this darky, Father Divine. | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 9a5eddd | I wouldn't care whether it was a laboratory or a carnival. But it's merely safe. Tell me, Mr. Pollock, what is the matter with Gopher Prairie? | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| d8038dd | Isn't there perhaps something the matter with you and me? (May I join you in the honor of having something the matter?)" "(Yes, thanks.) No, I think it's the town." | Sinclair Lewis | ||
| 3f45c09 | We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes. | Sinclair Lewis |