Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one..

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round..

No war is inevitable until it breaks out..

Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history..

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight..

If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves..

There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to y….

All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left ….

History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, o….

Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently..

History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events..

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones..

Psychoanalysts believe that the only "normal" people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else..

Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness..

Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery..

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting..

A master of improvised speech and improvised policies..

If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own..

In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pl….

Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions..

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past..