James Joll quotes:

The tragedy of all political action is that some problems have no solution; none of the alternatives are intellectually consistent or morally uncompromising; and whatever decision is taken will harm somebody.

The greatest Marxist writer of the twentieth century, paradoxically, is also one of the greatest examples of the independence of the human spirit from its material limitations.

The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.