81 Quotes by Adam Hochschild

Among the diners were two young Americans, Anna Strunsky and William English Walling. Having first met in the United States, they had crossed paths again in Russia, where they were each gathering material for magazine articles. The shock of seeing the student killed brought them closer. As the melodramatic Anna wrote to her brother, "Our love which has been filling our hearts from the hour of our first meeting suddenly burst into speech. It was was baptized in blood.

Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and Picasso.

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

No international court can ever substitute for a working national justice system. Or for a society at piece.

As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.

For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding - the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation - for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.