John Keegan Quotes

• Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they’re the people you have to kill, aren’t they?

  John Keegan

• We may have to have a geo-political regrouping or major geo-political changes.

  John Keegan

• There are certain wicked people in the world that you can’t deal with except by force.

  John Keegan

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  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.

   

  John Keegan

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  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.

   

  John Keegan

• 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.

  John Keegan

• The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.

  John Keegan

• The great Chinese classics have always said that it’s better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought.

  John Keegan

• Some people are more terrorist than others.

  John Keegan

• 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.

  John Keegan

• Nobody should teach anywhere for 25 years, but I did.

  John Keegan

• Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?

  John Keegan

• 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.

  John Keegan

• 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.

  John Keegan

• If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.

  John Keegan

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

  John Keegan

• I think that black Africa is extremely terrifying. Black Africa can become a maelstrom of warring tribes without the outside world needing to feel the need to do anything about it.

  John Keegan

• 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.

  John Keegan

• 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.

  John Keegan

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  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.

   

  John Keegan

John Keegan (23)

Birth:	15th May, 1934
Death:	2nd August, 2012
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Journalist

About

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan was born in London, England. He was a British military historian and journalist. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford University. He was appointed to a lectureship in Military History at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 1960-1986. Leaving the academy in 1986 he joined the Daily Telegraph as a Defence Correspondent and remained with the publication as Defence Editor until his death, also writing for the American conservative website, National Review Online. He wrote several books include: The Face of Battle, Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle (with Richard Holmes), The Mask of Command, The Second World War, A History of Warfare, The First World War, Intelligence in War, The Iraq War, and The American Civil War. In 1993 he won the Duff Cooper Prize, and in 1996 he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History. In 1999 he was knighted "for services to Military History".

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Today's Anniversary - 10th December

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