Margaret MacMillan Quotes

#1. What may seem like a reasonable way of protecting oneself can look very different from the other side of the border.

Margaret MacMillan

#2. History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.

Margaret MacMillan

#3. IF YOU BELIEVE THE DOCTORS," Salisbury once remarked, "nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe.

Margaret MacMillan

#4. But the superiority of the British is that it is a matter of complete indifference to them if they appear to be stupid.

Margaret MacMillan

#5. China. The Kaiser had temporarily

Margaret MacMillan

#6. Nationalist movements often overlapped with economic and class issues: Rumanian and Ruthenian peasants, for example, challenged their Hungarian and Polish landlords.

Margaret MacMillan

#7. Louvain was a dull place, said a guidebook in 1910, but when the time came it made a spectacular fire.

Margaret MacMillan

#8. British would use every means from persuasion to bribery in Morocco and when those failed the wives of British diplomats knew what they had to do to further Britain's interests.

Margaret MacMillan

#9. The delegates to the peace conference after World War I tried to impose a rational order on an irrational world.

Margaret MacMillan

#10. As the American historian John Lewis Gaddis put it, it is like looking in a rearview mirror: if you only look back, you will land in the ditch, but it helps to know where you have come from and who else is on the road.

Margaret MacMillan

#11. Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment.

Margaret MacMillan

#12. Theodore Rex. Roosevelt was driven by ambition, idealism and vanity. As his daughter famously remarked: My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.

Margaret MacMillan

#13. Anyone who falls into your hands falls to your sword!

Margaret MacMillan

#14. Wilson agreed reluctantly to their attempts: I don't much like to make a compromise with people who aren't reasonable. They will always believe that, by persisting in their claims, they will be able to obtain more.

Margaret MacMillan

#15. In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.

Margaret MacMillan

#16. 3053Geography also gave Russia a rich choice of potential enemies.

Margaret MacMillan

#17. The glories of the past compensated for the imperfections of the present.

Margaret MacMillan

#18. We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

Margaret MacMillan