Margaret MacMillan

“Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.”

“Modernism was born in part out of the need to find fresh ways of expression, to describe a new world that was unlike anything that had gone before.”

“History can be helpful in making sense of the world we live in. It can also be fascinating, even fun.”

“The Italian futurists, the German expressionists, and the British vorticists were fascinated by speed and the ways the modern world was shattering conventions. The old ways of painting, writing, sculpting, and composing no longer seemed adequate to capture the world.”

“Women are interested in relationships and how other societies manage those relationships. They may have been constrained in what roles were open to them, but they could question and observe, and they could write it down.”

“Managing the relationship with a giant neighbour has been central to our foreign policy for more than a century. Trade and investment, as well as people, have flowed back and forth across the border, and the U.S. is, by far, our biggest trading partner.”

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

“Nuclear proliferation has never entirely been brought under control, and the arsenals of nuclear powers contain bombs far more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“It took a world war, between 1914 and 1918, to draw the United States into a deeper and more sustained relationship with the wider world.”

“If we do not, as historians, write the history of great events as well as the small stories that make up the past, others will, and they will not necessarily do it well.”

“How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?”

“I like to think I'm a recovering historian.”

“הייתי בישראל רק פעם אחת, ב־2010, ואני מגיעה ממדינה גדולה כמו קנדה. ומה שהכי תפס את תשומת לבי בישראל הוא כמה היא קטנה וכמה הגבולות שלה קרובים זה לזה. אני חושבת שהגאוגרפיה משפיעה בהכרח על התפיסה שלכם, ויש בזה משהו קלסטרופובי. אתם בעליל פגיעים כי אתם מדינה קטנה ואין לכם לאן לסגת.”

“קראתי כמה יומנים ממלחמת העולם השנייה, ואנשים כתבו: 'הייתי קצת מדוכא מחיי קודם, ואז באה המלחמה ועשיתי משהו, והייתה לי משמעות כלשהי'. ולמרות שאולי זו לא התקופה המאושרת בחייהם, אנשים כנראה די שמחים כי הם מרגישים מועילים ותורמים לאחרים, ושיש להם ערך.”

“כמה אנחנו מעריצים אנשים שזוכים בפרסים על גבורה בקרב. אנחנו אמביוולנטיים כלפי מלחמה.”

“אני חושבת שקטסטרופות גדולות, ואני כוללת בזה גם את מגפת הקורונה, גורמות לממשלות ולחברות לעשות דברים שהן לא היו עושות אחרת או בנסיבות נורמליות, ולהוציא כספים שלא היו מוציאות אחרת.”

“אנחנו חיים בעולם שמלחמות מעצבות אותו, גם אם איננו מכירים בכך תמיד.”

“History matters.”

“Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things, and then something goes wrong - they just don't know when to stop.”

“Poor little Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, or whatever her name is. It must be incredible at that age to be surrounded by people telling you you're wonderful.”