84 Quotes by Max Hastings

The prime principle of employing force in pursuit of national objectives is to ensure that it is effective.

It did not occur to Hitler, after his victories in the west, that it might be more difficult to overcome a brutalised society, inured to suffering, than democracies such as France and Britain, in which moderation and respect for human life were deemed virtues.

The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses ... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.

I would be miserable if I went to bed without having written 1,000 words about something.

It was always inevitable that if you get serious trouble in any family then everybody's inclined to look at the head of that family and see if they see any cause or reason to associate it with the head of the, head of the family, why it should be.

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

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

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

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