There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to yourself, well it doesn't matter much. An admirable feeling.

All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.

History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.

Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.

A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.