I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.

To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful? ... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should - or perhaps can - history be written while it is still smoking?

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

Human behavior is timeless.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.