History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.

Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!

If you spend too long trying to avoid death, you will be dead in at least one way.

Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.

By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.

Their souls were contagious. ... Bloodsuckers, spiders and vampires: that was what Lenin called them.

Egyptologists, skilled in piecing together the papyri of lost civilisations, suddenly discovered that the same talent could be applied to working out the pattern of German radio traffic.