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

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

I don't write huge books any more. I used to write 1,000 printed pages, but now I write short books. I did one on Napoleon, 50,000 words - enjoyed doing that. He was a baddie. I did one on Churchill, which was a bestseller in New York, I'm glad to say. 50,000 words. He was a goodie.

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.

There are no inevitabilities in history

The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.

Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.