At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species.

I was very fond of Princess Diana. She used to have me over to lunch to ask my advice. I'd give her good advice, and she'd say: 'I entirely agree. Paul, you're so right.' Then she'd go and do the opposite.

In the long term, it is desirable that the human race, faced with the prospect of extinction on Earth, should prepare an escape route for itself to another inhabitable planet.

Hell is being trapped in a night-club with the'beautiful people'and forced to live in a'luxury penthouse flat'.

If the decline of Christianity created the modern political zealot - and his crimes - so the evaporation of religious faith among the educated left a vacuum in the minds of Western intellectuals easily filled by secular superstition. There is no other explanation for the credulity with which scientists, accustomed to evaluating evidence, and writers, whose whole function was to study and criticize society, accepted the crudest Stalinist propaganda at its face value. They needed to believe; they wanted to be duped.

If we want foxes, to observe and delight in, we must have hunting.

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.