Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

An educated man should know everything about something, and something about everything.

History being the record of human action is a richly variegated material, and it is not easy to give a true impression of the stuff by snipping off an inch or two for a pattern.

Without the imaginative insight which goes with creative literature, history cannot be intelligibly written.

My own varying estimates of the facts themselves, as the years passed, showed me too clearly how much of history must always rest in the eye of the beholder; our deductions are so often different it is impossible they should always be right.

All normal human beings are interested in their past. Only when the interest becomes an obsession, overshadowing present and future conduct, is it a danger. In much the same way healthy nations are interested in their history, but a morbid preoccupation with past glories is a sign that something is wrong with the constitution of the State.

International politics, by and large, are a depressing study.