H. A. L. Fisher

"All political decisions are taken under great pressure, and if a treaty serves its turn for ten or twenty years, the wisdom of its framers is sufficiently confirmed."

"It is easier for eight or nine elderly men to feel their way towards unanimity if they are not compelled to conduct their converging maneuvers under the microscopes and telescopes of the press, but are permitted to shuffle about a little in slippers."

"I can see … only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen."

"Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels."

"Politics is the art of human happiness."