Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle – a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a conflict of rich dark reds and Lincoln greens against fishscale greys and arctic blues.
I think that black Africa is extremely terrifying. Black Africa can become a maelstrom of warring tribes without the outside world needing to feel the need to do anything about it.
I can’t visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.
Soldiers, when committed to a task, can’t compromise. It’s unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it’s been done.
The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but a mask made in such form as will mark him to men of his time and place as the leader they want and need.
I don’t look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university.
The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they’d fallen compared with the West.
Slavery in the modern world implies the absolute deprivation of the individual’s liberty, while possession of weapons and mastery of their use are means to the individual’s liberation. We do not perceive how a man may be armed and at the same time bereft of his freedom.
The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.
The great Chinese classics have always said that it’s better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought.
Nobody should teach anywhere for 25 years, but I did.
The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don’t know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.
If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.
Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they’re the people you have to kill, aren’t they?
Some people are more terrorist than others.
There are certain wicked people in the world that you can’t deal with except by force.
Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.
Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.
I don’t think that what’s going on in Bosnia is political activity. It’s partly political, but it’s partly atavistic as well.
I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books.