As a child, I had loved history because it showed so many alternative worlds. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
War is a crucial, deeply ingrained part of human history. It has to be understood. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
I tend to think history is more a branch of literature than science. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
I do tend to look at individuals and whether they do or do not matter in history. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
As history reminds us again and again, wars are not always made on the basis of rational calculations: often the contrary. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
If we do not, as historians, write the history of great events as well as the small stories that make up the… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
When I first read Barbara Tuchman's 'The Guns of August' in the autumn of 1963, it was as though history went from… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
If you read about millions of people doing this and millions of people doing that, history seems remote and inaccessible. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
History can be helpful in making sense of the world we live in. It can also be fascinating, even fun. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
Women throughout history have had to defy rigid conventions about what is and is not expected of them. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
When I sat down to make a list of characters in history who exhibited curiosity, most were women. I thought it was… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs,… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
I'm interested in the balance between big currents in history - the economies, the ideologies, social structures, and so on - and… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
I think what we should do as historians is understand. And we can have our own views about how things turned out,… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
History belongs to everyone. I don't think you have to give up scholarly standards. But I also don't think you want to… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
For many human beings, an interest in the past starts with themselves. That is, in part, a result of biology. Like other… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
As a Canadian, I've always approached international history as an outsider, neither attacking nor defending key decisions - those were made by… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
“We should not be impressed when our leaders say firmly, "History teaches us" or "History will show that we were right." They… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
“In a secular world, which is what most of us in Europe and North America live in, history takes on the role… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share Image
Some might argue humans are hard-wired to fight. I don't agree: we are conscious beings who have the capacity to make decisions. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
I wish we could see understanding the First World War as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
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. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
Individual lives remind us that there is something called a common humanity and that, over the centuries, there have been people who have lived… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
The 1898 annexation of the Hawaiian Islands merely formally recognized what had long been American domination. — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
“There are only two perfectly useless things in the world,” he quipped. “One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré!” — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
“Nationalist movements often overlapped with economic and class issues: Rumanian and Ruthenian peasants, for example, challenged their Hungarian and Polish landlords.” — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
How curious that such an outsize man, in physique as well as personality, should be remembered today mainly for giving his name to a… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
“Part of Nietzsche’s appeal was that it was easy to read a great deal into his work, and people including socialists, vegetarians, feminists, conservatives… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
If we do not, as historians, write the history of great events as well as the small stories that make up the past, others… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
Many in the English-speaking world came to agree with the Germans that the Treaty of Versailles, and the reparations in particular, were unjust, and… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
Women are interested in relationships and how other societies manage those relationships. They may have been constrained in what roles were open to them,… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
Managing the relationship with a giant neighbour has been central to our foreign policy for more than a century. Trade and investment, as well… — Margaret MacMillan Copy Share
