Will an abandonment of a disastrous policy be more or less disastrous? Well, when I put it that way, it suddenly seems obvious.

"The world around us redounds with opportunities, explodes with opportunities, which nearly all folk ignore because it would require them to violate a habit of thought; there are a thousand Hufflepuff bones waiting to be sharpened into spears ... I cannot quite comprehend what goes through people's minds when they repeat the same failed strategy over and over, but apparently it is an astonishingly rare realization that you can try something else."