British - Historian | June 8, 1939 -
I wanted to produce a book that would demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people who answered to Anders's command but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions: from death to despair, fear and longings and eventually to hope.
Norman Davies
FearHopeDeathDiversityPeople
The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course.
NaturalSovietCourseMostCollapse
One of the few things that can be said for certain about Europe's prehistoric peoples is that they all came from somewhere else.
SaidEuropeThingsSomewhereFew
None of Europe's modern nations are genuinely native.
EuropeModernNoneNativeNations
I happen to belong to that group opinion which holds the break-up of the United Kingdom to be imminent.
OpinionGroupHappenKingdomBelong
The advance of standard English culture was less assisted by government policy than by the sheer weight, wealth, and number of England's well-established cultural institutions.
CultureGovernmentWealthPolicy
The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad.
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Under Lenin, hardly less than under Stalin, historians harbored critical opinions at their peril. The writing, let alone the publication, of political diaries was virtually impossible.
AloneWritingImpossiblePolitical
Fifty years would seem to be time enough to prepare a definitive history of the Second World War. In an age of instant data-gathering, one might think that the historians could have arrived at a consensus for interpreting the main events of the war. In reality, no such consensus exists.
AgeHistoryTimeWarWorldThink
Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.
WarWorldWantWhyOthersTheme
Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order.
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Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.
HumanCulturesCapacityMuchBoth
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