John Lewis Gaddis Quotes

The Cold War could have produced a hot war that might have ended human life on the planet. But because the fear of such a war turned out to be greater than all of the differences that separated the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies, there was now reason for hope that it would never take place.

Stalin's postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been born in revolution. Both embraced ideologies with global aspirations: what worked at home, their leaders assumed, would also do so for the rest of the world.

No one can be certain where or when the next great earthquake will occur. It is helpful to know, though, that such upheavals take place more frequently in California than in Kansas: that people who live along the San Andreas Fault should configure their houses against seismic shocks, not funnel clouds. Nobody would prudently bet, just yet, on who will play in the 2001 World Series. It seems safe enough to assume, though, that proficiency will determine which teams get there: achieving it, too, is a kind of configuring against contingencies. Not even the most capable war planner can predict where the next war will occur, or what its outcome will be. But is it equally clear that war planning should therefore cease? The point, in all of these instances, is not so much to predict the future as to prepare for it.

Learning about the past liberates the learner from oppressions earlier constructions of the past have imposed upon them.