Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
Tags: habit, easy, enough, discipline

Other Quotes by "Barbara W. Tuchman"

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.
Tags: like, house, me, life
If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
Tags: any, capacity, degree, writing
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.
Tags: children, home, war, work
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.
Tags: friend, forest, past, tree
The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
Tags: glory, war, history, sea
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