John Keegan Quotes

32 quotes in 546 categories

• The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but…
• 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…
• Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle - a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a conflict of rich…
• Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy:…
• The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all it oceans. It…
• Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.
• Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.
• I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.
• 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…
• 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.
• 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…
• I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.
• 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.
• 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?
• 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…
• 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…
• There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force
• Some people are more terrorist than others
• Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?
• We saw the children and the women with their babies and then I heard the poouff — the flame had broken through the thatched roof…

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