Shelby Foote: Quotes about thinking

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

Shelby Foote: 32 quotes3 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.”

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

“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."”

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

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

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

“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.”

Smithsonian Magazine, August 1996