John Keegan
John Keegan
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan OBE FRSLwas a British military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He was the author of many published works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime, and intelligence warfare, as well as the psychology of battle...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth15 May 1934
thinking mountain valleys
I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.
thinking political bosnia
I don't think that what's going on in Bosnia is political activity. It's partly political, but it's partly atavistic as well.
book thinking trying
I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books.
extinction nukes situation
I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.
exercise men people
Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.
military virtue should
Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.
stress successful fighting
Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.
strong dark battle
Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle - a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a conflict of rich dark reds and Lincoln greens against fishscale greys and arctic blues.
graduation people looks
I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university.
men leader needs
The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but a mask made in such form as will mark him to men of his time and place as the leader they want and need.
writing history people
The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.
regret mean people
It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.
pieces speech energy
Hitler ... lacked the [inclination] for anything more than the occasional sensational display of emotion, in particular the great set-piece speech which mesmerized the mob and left him drained of ... energy.
years islam west
The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they'd fallen compared with the West.