We must rediscover the habit of thinking the best of each other

So long as the international community consists of sovereign states, war between them remains a possibility, of which all governments have to take reasonable account.

Tony Blair is already secretly grinning at the prospect of his third victory. You don't have to settle for that.

We cannot possibly take them all into this country [asylum seekers] - it is a completely unrealistic expectation.

The true use of history, whether civil or military, is not to make man clever for the next time, it is to make him wise forever.

People often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics or perhaps in political science, who have led their governments into disastrous decisions and miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever of the historical background, the cultural universe, of the foreign societies with which they have to deal.

The important thing when you are going to do something brave is to have someone on hand to witness it.