What we learn from history is that no one learns from history - Otto von Bismarck

Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.

Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning.

It was not then possible to forecast with certainty whether and how long the Czar's friendship would remain a realisable political asset. In any case, however, simple common sense enjoined us not to let it fall into the possession of our enemies, whom we might discern in the Poles, the philo-Polish Russians, and, ultimately, probably in the French.