From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

- Donald Kagan

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story.

- Donald Kagan

War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states

- Donald Kagan

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

- Donald Kagan

I can see that you [Bruce Cole] are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a dif…

- Donald Kagan

In Our Underachieving Colleges, [Derek] Bok acts as both diagnostician and healer, wielding social-science statistics and professional studies to tra…

- Donald Kagan

You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

- Donald Kagan

All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion ab…

- Donald Kagan

We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the wh…

- Donald Kagan