John Keegan Quotes

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 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 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.

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 written history of the world is largely a history of warfare, because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife, or struggles for independence.

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.

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.

There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force

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?

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.

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

Some people are more terrorist than others

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

A civilised man is someone who has discovered something more satisfying than combat.

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

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

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

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.