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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.

— Barbara Tuchman A Distant Mirror (1978)

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More quotes by Barbara Tuchman

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

A Distant Mirror (1978)

Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.

A Distant Mirror (1978)

Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control.

A Distant Mirror (1978)

If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.

A Distant Mirror (1978)

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

A Distant Mirror (1978)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.

Jerome The Cry for Justice (1915)

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Barbara Tuchman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.