The March of Folly Quotes

“No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“In a dependent relationship, the protégé can always control the protector by threatening to collapse.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Little attention was paid, because the German people, no matter how hungry, remained obedient.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“nothing to learning for I have none; nothing to youth for I was old when I began; nothing to popularity for I was hated all round.… This is the modest truth and my friends at Rome call me more god than man.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian’s statement about Philip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns: “No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it." Pope Alexander”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Prison does not silence ideas whose time has come.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“To those who think them selves strong, force always seems the easiest solution.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done." Benjamin Franklin”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“The follies that produced the loss of American virtue following Vietnam begin with continuous overreacting, in the invention of endangered national security, the invention of vital interest, the invention of a commitment which rapidly assumed a life of its own .”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“When a pope's election could not be explained rationally, it was attributed to the Holy Ghost.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“The poorest man in his cottage may bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done.” This in essence was to be the Burke thesis: that principle does not have to be demonstrated when the demonstration is inexpedient.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“They were deaf to disaffection, blind to the alternative ideas it gave rise to, blandly impervious to challenge, unconcerned by the dismay at their misconduct and the rising wrath at their misgovernment, fixed in refusal to change, almost stupidly stubborn in maintaining a corrupt existing system. They could not change it because they were part of it, grew out of it, depended on it.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Inventive rhetoric is characteristic of true believers.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Folly is a child of power.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“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, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam