Quotes About History

I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history.

It seems to me that if you were to take almost any half-century in history, you'd find a grand societal tug-of-war between the community and the individual.

This is the moment of your defeat; you have just put in the last nails in the coffin of communism.

There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles

Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.

My parents were gardeners themselves, and perforce they used environmental techniques because it was during the war, and you didn't have the new sorts of chemicals.

Warfare ... is just an invention, older and more widespread than the jury system, but none the less an invention.

The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war, the tendencies are far more important than the episodes.

We've been at peace about as long as e were at war.

I'd always wanted to do something about the Second World War, but I didn't want to do another combat film, whether it was air, land, or sea.

A trillion dollars spent, 2,000 American lives lost - Afghanistan is the longest war in American history. But you don't hear a word about it.

Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.

The history of modern nutritionism has been a history of macronutrients at war: protein against carbs; carbs against proteins, and then fats; fats against carbs.

For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

The French couldn't hate us any more unless we helped 'em out in another war.

That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

You think history is going to remember the United States as a great democracy? No, they're going to think of us as a nation that became addicted to war. They'll call us warlords.

Never in the history of the United States have we cut back on troops when we've been at war.

Who is the descendant of the slavemasters a descendant of slaves to fight other people in thier own country?

I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane.

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes

That's the worst of a war--you have to go on hearing about it so long.

Belligerents always abolish war after a war.

The Iranians don't intimidate! They're like the Vietnamese and the Iraqis. You want to start a war with them? They'll still be fighting in fifty years!