History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.

I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.

[Margaret Thatcher] admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother!

[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me.

Those who are made can be unmade.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Rafe asks him, could the king's freedom be obtained, sir, with more economy of means? Less bloodshed? Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, one you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant, the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection, his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle. Before he wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand.