Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
Interpretation
Desire can often influence decision-making and create justifications for policies.
The quote by Barbara Tuchman suggests that when individuals or groups desire something, they can invariably frame arguments to support that desire as a legitimate policy decision. This highlights the tendency of people to bend reasoning and facts to suit their needs or wants, emphasizing the influence of subjective motives on objective policymaking.
In practice
A politician may use this quote during a debate to highlight how policies can be swayed by personal desires.
In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
One constant among the elements of 1914βas of any eraβwas the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true - his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.
You know, there is a long tradition in the U.S. of, um, promoting elections up to the point that you get an outcome you don't like. Look at Latin America in the Cold War.
The authority and influence of France on the world scene in the 21st century will not depend solely on its modernity and cohesion, nor even on the continuity and professionalism of its foreign policy. France will be heeded if it has a message to convey. Faced with the temptations of laissez-faire, France must stand out as the nation with the imagination and determination to pursue an ambition that combines cogency with generosity.
Elections are always a Rorschach test - people look at the results and see what they want to see.
If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.
So efficient are the available instruments of slavery; fingerprints, lie detectors, brain washings, gas chambers; that we shiver at the thought of political change which might put these instruments in the hands of men of hate.
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