“To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.”

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 459

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states." by Barbara W. Tuchman?
Barbara W. Tuchman photo
Barbara W. Tuchman 45
American historian and author 1912–1989

Related quotes

Clay Shirky photo

“The elements of good trading are cutting losses, cutting losses, and cutting losses.”

Ed Seykota (1946) American commodities trader

Source: Jenks, Philip, (Editor) 500 of the Most Witty, Acerbic and Erudite Things Ever Said About Money, Harriman House (December 2002), ISBN 1897597223 Read it here http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1897597223&id=lERXBvyeeQ0C&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=seykota&sig=K97S8hGKxQmB6w7x79enj9tEGw4

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)
Context: There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

Heinrich von Treitschke photo
Adam Smith photo

“The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 821.

“The loss which is unknown is no loss at all.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 38
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Kevin D. Williamson photo

“This is a tragedy among human history, the result of large numbers of human errors. But the net of justice is omipresent, it never missed.”

Tan Zuoren (1954) Chinese activist

譚作人:四川大地震人禍更勝於天災 http://www.dajiyuan.com/b5/8/5/22/n2126567.htm

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Justice and fair dealings among nations rest upon principles identical with those which control justice and fair dealing among the individuals of which nations are composed”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Justice and fair dealings among nations rest upon principles identical with those which control justice and fair dealing among the individuals of which nations are composed, with the vital exception that each nation must do its own part in international police work. If you get into trouble here, you can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of other people’s in connection with us. I believe in national friendships and heartiest good-will to all nations; but national friendships, like those between men, must be founded on respect as well as on liking, on forbearance as well as upon trust. I should be heartily ashamed of any American who did not try to make the American government act as justly toward the other nations in international relations as he himself would act toward any individual in private relations. I should be heartily ashamed to see us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong from a stronger power.

“The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: The Mismeasure of Man (1996), p. 272

Related topics