We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.

I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.

After 1945 what happened was rather the opposite: with one major exception boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead.

Love, it seems to me, is that condition in which one is most contentedly oneself.

Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life.

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.