The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

Courage is the essential element in any great public man or woman.

If I see a door ajar, I push on it to see how far it will open, and if it opens wide I go through it.

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.

...the century's most radical vice... the notion that human beings can be shoveled around like concrete.

The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them.