I can see that you [Bruce Cole] are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states

Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.

I can see that you [Bruce Cole] are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.