Max Hastings Quotes

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter.

People who get on at school are the ones who play by the rules, and no one's going to get far in later life playing by the system.

The only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges.

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.

You cannot write down how people are good; you just know it, and cannot get away from it.

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'

It's miraculous how much easier the computer has made my sort of work.

I would have been a disastrous soldier.

When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

I've always found women more loyal, more disciplined, less neurotic, more hardworking. I just think they're perfect colleagues. Whereas, God knows, I've dealt with plenty of neurotic men.

I'm a wet liberal really, and always have been. But I'm sort of an aggressive wet liberal.

Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war)