Quotes by Margaret Macmillan - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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For many human beings, an interest in the past starts with themselves. That is, in part, a result of biology. Like other creatures, humans have a beginning and an ending, and in between lies their story.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Biology
Ending
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The word 'populism' was everywhere in 2016. Political leaders claiming to speak for the people have achieved significant victories in Europe, Asia, and, with the election of Donald Trump, the United States.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Asia
Election
Political Leaders
Significant
Achieved
Political People Election
Claiming
Donald
Donald Trump
For The People
Political Election People
Victories
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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 that Lloyd George had capitulated to the vengeful French.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
English Speaking
Reparations
Unjust
Vengeful
Germans
Treaty
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The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs, from greater understanding of ourselves and our world to answers about what to do.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Our World
Variety
Government Policies
Greater Understanding
Market Forces
Policies
Responds
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An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Apology
Process
Recompense
Hurts
Equally
Erupt
Fester
Towards
Offered
Received
Step
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Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Book
Looks
Wake Up
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By the start of August 1914, it was dawning on the British that a major war was about to break out on mainland Europe. Public opinion and, crucially, the cabinet was deeply divided on whether to intervene or stay out.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
August
Divided
Public Opinion
Cabinet
Dawning
Intervene
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I'm not sure I'm going to say that women and men are exactly the same. I think we may have different ways of approaching things, different sensitivities, and women are often better than men at picking up emotional cues.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Different Ways
Men Women Better
Men Women May
Approaching
Exactly The Same
Women Men Better
Picking
Women And Men
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Women are interested in relationships and how other societies manage those relationships. They may have been constrained in what roles were open to them, but they could question and observe, and they could write it down.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Manage
Constrained
Societies
Observe
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In the 19th century, we didn't much like the loud annexationist voices south of the border or American support for Sinn Fein adventurers who thought, by seizing the Canadian colonies, they could force Britain out of Ireland.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Ireland
Loud
Seizing
Sinn Fein
Adventurers
Border
Canadian
Colonies
Fein
Sinn
Voices
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Are artists the canaries in the mine, warning of the coming explosion before anyone else? It's hard to look at the world before 1914 and not wonder if they somehow felt a catastrophe was bearing down on them and their societies.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Catastrophe
Warning
Anyone Else
Bearing
Explosion
Societies
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Nominally left- and right-wing populists differ primarily in their choice of which 'others' to exclude and attack, with the former singling out big corporations and oligarchs, and the latter targeting ethnic or religious minorities.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Big Corporations
Corporations
Former
Latter
Minorities
Right Wing
Differ
Ethnic
Exclude
Primarily
Singling
Targeting
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Exercising power can do strange things to people. You can become convinced that you're irreplaceable. You can become convinced that you're always right. And I think the danger is the longer you stay in power, the more likely that is to happen.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Convinced
Danger
Irreplaceable
Strange Things
Power Always People
Exercising
Power People Always
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Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, is a true populist; Senator Bernie Sanders, the former U.S. presidential candidate who campaigned for Hillary Clinton after losing his battle for the Democratic Party's nomination, is not.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Independence
Battle
Former
Populist
Presidential
Bernie Sanders
Candidate
Senator
Hillary
Hillary Clinton
Nomination
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The only person, if you're a religious person, who's always right is God. And if you make the mistake of thinking that you, like God, are always right, and that you, like God, always know everything, then it seems to me you're riding for a fall.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Religious Person
Riding
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It is true that large parts of the world have not had to endure state-to-state wars for decades. The majority of the world's nations have also been spared the scourge of civil wars, although many have known violence from revolutionary insurrection.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Decades
Endure
Insurrection
Revolutionary
Scourge
Civil Wars
Spared
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As a Canadian, I've always approached international history as an outsider, neither attacking nor defending key decisions - those were made by actors who are also major figures within national historical traditions for American and British scholars.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Attacking
Figures
History Always American
Defending
Scholars
Traditions
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Managing the relationship with a giant neighbour has been central to our foreign policy for more than a century. Trade and investment, as well as people, have flowed back and forth across the border, and the U.S. is, by far, our biggest trading partner.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Foreign Policy
Investment
Neighbour
Policy
Trading
Relationship People More
Border
Central
Forth
Giant
Partner
Trading Partner
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The cubism of Braque or Picasso, the dissonant compositions of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, the free-flowing and often erotic choreography of Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky - these were acts of rebellion against the certainties and traditions of the old world.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Choreography
Cubism
Old World
Rebellion
Stravinsky
Acts
Certainties
Picasso
Traditions
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Individual lives remind us that there is something called a common humanity and that, over the centuries, there have been people who have lived and breathed and sometimes worried about very different things and sometimes worried about the same things we do.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Different Things
Worried
Breathed
Centuries
Remind
Same Things
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I first read the 'Raj Quartet' in the early 1970s, when Paul Scott's decision to set his novels in the dying days of the British Raj in India seemed an eccentric choice, almost as though he did not want readers. The British were tired of their imperial past.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
British
Decision
Dying
Eccentric
Tired
Choice
Early
Imperial
Paul
Quartet
Readers
Scott
Seemed
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American diplomats worked closely with the League of Nations. The United States used its considerable influence to settle some of the outstanding issues left over from World War I, and Washington took the lead in negotiating naval limitations in the Pacific.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Diplomats
Naval
Negotiating
Outstanding
Pacific
World War I
Closely
Considerable
Limitations
Settle
World War
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The Italian futurists, the German expressionists, and the British vorticists were fascinated by speed and the ways the modern world was shattering conventions. The old ways of painting, writing, sculpting, and composing no longer seemed adequate to capture the world.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Adequate
Capture
Composing
Conventions
Fascinated
Italian
Modern World
Old Ways
Sculpting
Shattering
Speed
German
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The trouble with the First World War, for example, is that people think war was inevitable, but I don't agree. If you look at the Cold War, you could argue that a war was bound to happen between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies, but it didn't.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Allies
Cold War
First World War
Soviet
Soviet Union
War World Look
First World
For Example
War Look World
World War
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There was that argument that if we had more women in positions of authority, the world would be a nicer place. And then we got Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi. When women become acclimatised to war, they can become every bit as ruthless as men.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Authority
Ruthless
War Men Women
War Women Men
Gandhi
Margaret
Nicer
Positions
Thatcher
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How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Florence
Thousand
Best History Great
Caesar
Catherine
Centuries
Dramas
Galileo
Invent
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How curious that such an outsize man, in physique as well as personality, should be remembered today mainly for giving his name to a small fish. For the 19th century, Bismarck was no herring but a leviathan. Between 1862 and 1890, he created Germany, seeing off first the Austrian empire and then France.
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Curious
France
Germany
Herring
Physique
Remembered
Seeing
Small Fish
Fish
Empire
Small
Mainly
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I did projects on Champlain coming up the St. Lawrence River and on Henry Hudson cast adrift in the bay that now bears his name. And I read dozens of historical novels: Rosemary Sutcliff on Roman Britain and G. A. Henty on British heroes, though my all-time favourite was Ronald Welch's 'Knight Crusader.'
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Adrift
All Time
Bears
Favourite
Historical
Heroes
Bay
Dozens
Henry
Hudson
Lawrence
River
Roman
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I'm interested in the balance between big currents in history - the economies, the ideologies, social structures, and so on - and the decisions that people have to make. At the heart of all these great decisions to go to war, there are human beings who have to say, 'Yes, let's do it,' or 'No, we won't do it.'
Margaret Macmillan / Historian
Currents
War History Great
Ideologies
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