John Keegan

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

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 think that what's going on in Bosnia is political activity. It's partly political, but it's partly atavistic as well.

We may have to have a geo-political regrouping or major geo-political changes.

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.

Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.