Margaret MacMillan

“I've always been interested in war, but especially its effects on society, which means bringing in the voices of women, which aren't heard as much in the grand narratives.”

“George W. Bush, judging by his repeated invocations, thinks that time will eventually prove that he was right. He is not alone in putting his faith in the future.”

“If you start thinking war is inevitable, then in your own times, you don't resist it as strongly as you should.”

“I tend to think history is more a branch of literature than science.”

“I'm always wary of the lessons of the past. There's a lot of past out there, and you can draw whatever lessons you want.”

“It's not going to be easy to create a world where both sides prefer peace, but we have to try.”

“As history reminds us again and again, wars are not always made on the basis of rational calculations: often the contrary.”

“In my view, Germany could and should have made reparations for its aggression in World War I - but was the risk of renewed war worth forcing it to do so?”

“Exercising power can do strange things to people. You can become convinced that you're irreplaceable. You can become convinced that you're always right. And I think the danger is the longer you stay in power, the more likely that is to happen.”

“I'm interested in the balance between big currents in history - the economies, the ideologies, social structures, and so on - and the decisions that people have to make. At the heart of all these great decisions to go to war, there are human beings who have to say, 'Yes, let's do it,' or 'No, we won't do it.'”

“Individual lives remind us that there is something called a common humanity and that, over the centuries, there have been people who have lived and breathed and sometimes worried about very different things and sometimes worried about the same things we do.”