Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones. - A. J. P. Taylor

Trevor-Roper is inclined to depreciate the Whig interpretation of history. I still see its merits. After all, our political forerunners stumbled on a system of government the least imperfect that has been known. We still benefit from their inheritance. We still enjoy ordered liberty. The authority of the states is still limited though not as much as it should be. Macaulay erred, I think, when he added to the Whig interpretation the great delusion of his age, which was until the other day the great delusion of ours: belief in limitless progress and in the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of limitless improvement, both moral and material.

The details of diplomatic history do indeed seem of irredeemable triviality; but in fact, diplomatic history deals with the greatest of themes – with the relations of States, with peace and war, with the existence and destruction of communities and civilization.

In my experience Communism is intellectual alcohol – nasty and harmful if taken neat, but an essential ingredient of every stimulating drink.