The First Salute
Barbara W. Tuchman
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannon.”
“Pessimism is a primary source of passivity,”
“Revolutions produce other men, not new men. Halfway between truth and endless error, the mold of the species is permanent. That is Earth's burden.”
“It must always be an amazement how 18th century letter writers - even, and especially, officials - had the time and capacity to produce their sculpted sentences and perfection of grammar and mots justes, while 20th century successors can only envy the past and leave their readers painfully to pick their way through thickets of academic and the mud of bureaucratic jargon.”
“Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose. It created the impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in the wearer which has been lost sight of in our nervously egalitarian times.”
“Command, deprived of personal judgment, can win no battles.”
“To plunge into passionate dispute over the trivialities of so-called honor is a queerer but not uncommon gambit of men who have just come from putting their lives at stake in serious combat,”
“Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category.”
“Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.”
“A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit.”
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Book Keywords:
mercenaries, critical-thinking, motivation, assumptions, impression, military, peer-pressure, idealism, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, job, original-sin, materialism, laziness, writing, authority, anxiety, conventional-wisdom, returning-soldier, utopia, culture, excuses, patriotism, image, goal-setting, self-sacrifice
