If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.

The richness and variety, and indeed the advance, of our culture depend upon the continuation of this conflict [between conservatives and radicals], which is deeply rooted in human nature.

Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth

Every good historian is almost by definition a revisionist. He looks at the accepted view of a particular historic episode or period with a very critical eye.

For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.

Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.

I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy.