Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

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

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.