Barbara W. Tuchman

The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable.

He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it." Pope Alexander

His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw

Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis.

Our misconception in viewing the past lies in assuming that doubt and fear, permit, protests, violence and hate were not equally present.

One English nobleman and statesman read and reread a particular work of literature because it was "the only book which allowed him to forget politics.

Chronicling future appeasing Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain's rise to Parliament from first-generation commercial interests rather than the aristocracy, the author diagnoses even then that he had no center outside himself.

In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great.

Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.

The fate of warnings in political affairs is to be futile when the recipient wishes otherwise.

He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success.

Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.

Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham

Folly is a child of power.

If they are afraid of revision in the laboratory, truth will never be released except by accident.

When meeting criticism, he would regard it not as something to resent but as a thing to be examined, like an interesting beetle. "That's a curious view, not uninteresting.

No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little.

Humanizing war?! You may as well talk of humanizing Hell. Sir John Fisher