Simon Schama Quotes

Wars are begun by frightened men.

Most of my nightmares that jolt me awake either involve the cosmos or something completely out of human control. In reality, I worry more about nuclear war, or war in general.

These days, our senses are bombarded with aggression. We are constantly confronted with global images of unending, escalating war and violence.

Nations make wars; states make wars; and cultures make wars. We tend to conflate the three, but they are very different wars.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.”

Bullies are just frightened people.

After Sept. 11, there was a reticence and worrying about films that touched on war, and even more on terrorism.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

We are a Nation of peace and compassion, yet these people have and will devote every fiber of their beings to the destruction of Americans and our Country.

I realized that bullying never has to do with you. It's the bully who's insecure.

They hate whom they fear.

War is in the eyes.

First and foremost arms are tools in the service of rival nations, pointing at the possibility of a future war.

To many men... the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war.

It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result.

The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.

They’re invading.

Paranoia is dangerous for individuals and for nations as it gives rise to irrational behavior.

Worse than war is the very fear of war.

What I have learned about Afghanistan is that force carries more weight than anything else.

… without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.... Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.

I will write plain & slow because I know you have no time to listen to trifles. This is no trifle. When one nation is at war with another, all the People of the one are the enemies of the other.... Most unfortunately the war in which we are now Engaged, has been complicated with the belief on the one hand that all on the other were not Enemies. It would have been better if at the outset this mistake had not been made, and it is wrong longer to be misled by it.

War: First, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

War and democracy have never been happy bedfellows…. War has always threatened democracy.