Margaret MacMillan quotes:

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.

The delegates to the peace conference after World War I "tried to impose a rational order on an irrational world.

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.

History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.

The glories of the past compensated for the imperfections of the present.