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 imp….

The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet..

Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfun….

Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is th….

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided i….

No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditiona….

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled..

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..

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 n….

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests..

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down..

To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed p….

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive..

When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined..

Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated..

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that ….

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex..

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry..

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas….

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record..