John Keegan Quotes & Sayings

“Soldiers, when committed to a task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it's been done.”

“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.”

“It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.”

“Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.”

“I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.”

“If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.”

“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.”

“There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force.”

“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.”

“The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.”