Managing the relationship with a giant neighbour has been central to our foreign policy for more than a century. Trade and investment, as well as people, have flowed back and forth across the border, and the U.S. is, by far, our biggest trading partner.

Margaret MacMillan

Categorized in : Partner Back People Relationship

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

Margaret MacMillan

deceiving mind past

History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.

Margaret MacMillan

generations feel-good complicated

Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment.

Margaret MacMillan

wake-up book looks

Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things, and then something goes wrong - they just don't know when to stop.

Margaret MacMillan

stop great you people

Modernism was born in part out of the need to find fresh ways of expression, to describe a new world that was unlike anything that had gone before.

Margaret MacMillan

need new born world

An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings.

Margaret MacMillan

step own important sometimes

When I first read Barbara Tuchman's 'The Guns of August' in the autumn of 1963, it was as though history went from black and white to Technicolor.

Margaret MacMillan

autumn black-and-white black history

I've always loved reading diaries and memoirs and just getting a sense of different personalities and what made them tick as individuals.

Margaret MacMillan

loved always different reading

Climate change respects no borders.

Margaret MacMillan

climate-change climate borders change

Nominally left- and right-wing populists differ primarily in their choice of which 'others' to exclude and attack, with the former singling out big corporations and oligarchs, and the latter targeting ethnic or religious minorities.

Margaret MacMillan

others big choice left

By the start of August 1914, it was dawning on the British that a major war was about to break out on mainland Europe. Public opinion and, crucially, the cabinet was deeply divided on whether to intervene or stay out.

Margaret MacMillan

stay start opinion war

I wish we could see understanding the First World War as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one.

Margaret MacMillan

understanding wish war world

In the 19th century, we didn't much like the loud annexationist voices south of the border or American support for Sinn Fein adventurers who thought, by seizing the Canadian colonies, they could force Britain out of Ireland.

Margaret MacMillan

thought like support force

American diplomats worked closely with the League of Nations. The United States used its considerable influence to settle some of the outstanding issues left over from World War I, and Washington took the lead in negotiating naval limitations in the Pacific.

Margaret MacMillan

some influence war world

George W. Bush, judging by his repeated invocations, thinks that time will eventually prove that he was right. He is not alone in putting his faith in the future.

Margaret MacMillan

alone future faith time

No one is always right.

Margaret MacMillan

right always

I like to think I'm a recovering historian.

Margaret MacMillan

like think recovering historian

The word 'populism' was everywhere in 2016. Political leaders claiming to speak for the people have achieved significant victories in Europe, Asia, and, with the election of Donald Trump, the United States.

Margaret MacMillan

election political speak people

Political orientation is unimportant in populism because it does not deal in evidence or detailed proposals for change but in the manipulation of feelings by charismatic leaders.

Margaret MacMillan

evidence political change feelings

Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, is a true populist; Senator Bernie Sanders, the former U.S. presidential candidate who campaigned for Hillary Clinton after losing his battle for the Democratic Party's nomination, is not.

Margaret MacMillan

independence battle leader losing