Shelby Foote: Quotes about thinking

Shelby Foote was Novelist, historian. Explore interesting quotes on thinking.

Shelby Foote: 32 quotes 3 likes

“People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.”

Shelby Foote

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

People , Truth , Error , Thinking

“The bare bones of my life are almost unbearable. I was born during the First World War. I spent my adolescence in the Depression, and when I came of age, I was involved in the Second World War. That sounds a pretty horrible series of events. They seem perfectly natural to me. I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe. And the Second World War was a wonderful thing to be with. It's now called "the Good War." We usually referred to it as "this damned war."”

Shelby Foote

We didn't think of it as a good war. We did believe it was fought in a good cause.
Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

Life , War , People , Age

“I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value.”

Shelby Foote

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

Thinking

“Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery. Another was emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy-and it was. But the way it was done led to tragedy. Turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning. And then, in 1877, for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it.”

Shelby Foote

Smithsonian Magazine, August 1996

Democracy , Pain , People , Learning