Barbara W. Tuchman - The March of Folly (1984)

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In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia.... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.

Barbara W. Tuchman
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements, corrupts even more.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as the most flagrant of all the passions.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others—only to lose it over themselves.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

Barbara W. Tuchman
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.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.

Barbara W. Tuchman
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any human activity.

Barbara W. Tuchman