John Keegan

“Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all 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.”

“[W]e are hardened to what we know, and we rationalise and even justify cruelties practised by us and our like while retaining the capacity to be outraged, even disgusted by practices equally cruel which, under the hands of strangers, take a different form.”

“I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.”

“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.”

“Nobody should teach anywhere for 25 years, but I did.”

“Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.”

“If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.”

“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.”

“It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.”

“The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.”