Norman Davies Quotes

An ambassador', quipped Sir Henry Wootton, 'is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

NOMISMA, MEANING 'COIN', was used by both Greeks and Romans. Our own word 'money' derives, via the French monnaie, from the Latin moneta, meaning the mint, where coins are struck. (In early Rome the mint was situated on the Capitoline Hill in the temple of Juno Moneta.)

Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith.

As from the 1490s, the double-headed eagle began to appear as the symbol of state in Moscow as in Vienna, as indeed in Constantinople.

Discord among the ex-Soviet nationalities was fuelling an ugly brand of Russian nationalism. Voices in Moscow called for the re-conquest of Russia's 'near abroad'. For after Abkhazia, there waited several further targets for Russian intervention, including Tatarstan and Chechenia, and other non-Russian lands within the Russian Federation. Sooner or later, Russia would be forced to choose between its new-style democracy and its old-style imperialism.

Every 30 seconds, it transmitted portions of [a Chopin Polonaise] to tell the world that the capital was still in Polish hands. Angered by the unexpected setback, the German High Command decided to pound the stubborn citadel into submission. In round-the-clock raids, bombers knocked out flourmills, gasworks, power plants and reservoirs, then sowed the residential areas with incendiaries. One witness, passing scenes of carnage, enumerated the horrors: 'Everywhere corpses, wounded humans, dead horses . . . and hastily-dug graves.' . . . Finally food ran out, and famished Poles, as one man put it, 'cut off flesh as soon as a horse fell, leaving only the skeleton.' On September 28, Warsaw Radio replaced the polonaise with a funeral dirge.15

Also in 1492, and also for the first time, the 'new Constantinople - Moscow' may have been given its more familiar label of 'the Third Rome'.

Grain prices in France, for example, where the supply of coin was relatively scarce, were over seven times higher in 1600 than in 1500.

It is indeed the duty of historians to stress the contrast between
the standards of the past and the standards of the present. Some
fulfil that duty on purpose, others by accident.

The official ideology [of Poland] is Marxism-Leninism, which no one openly admits to believing. For Marx expressed the German view, and Lenin the Russian one, and the meeting of these particular minds has always spelled Polish ruin.

Although the rival cereals of rye, barley,oats, buckwheat and millet have continued to exist in Europe, the triumphal march of king wheat was uncontestable

The immediate future may be determined by a race between the United Kingdom and the EU over which beats the other to a major crisis.

Most Poles are by temperament 'agin'.

Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, whether the United States in the twentieth century or China in the twenty-first, the call goes out for offerings on American History or Chinese History, and siren voices sing that today's important countries are also those whose past is most deserving of examination, that a more comprehensive spectrum of historical knowledge can be safely ignored.

The big question about the hunter-gatherers, therefore, does not seem to be 'How did they progress towards the higher level of an agricultural and politicised society?' but 'What persuaded them to abandon the secure, well-provided and psychologically liberating advantages of their primordial lifestyle?'.1

The title 'Lord of All-Rus' did not possess much basis either in history or in current reality. It came into the same category as that whereby the kings of England laid claim to France. In the 1490s, two-and-a-half centuries after all traces of a united Kievan Rus' had been destroyed, it had the same degree of credibility that the king of France might have enjoyed if, in his struggle with the German Empire, he had proclaimed himself 'Lord of all the Franks'. By that time, it conflicted with the separate identity that the 'Ruthenes' of Lithuania had assumed from the 'Russians' of Moscow. Indeed, it all seemed sufficiently unreal for the Lithuanians to accept it as a small price to pay for Ivan's good humour. They were not to know it, but they were conceding the ideological cornerstone of territorial ambitions that would be pursued for 500 years.

The difference between a referendum and a plebiscite is a fine one. Both pertain to collective decisions made by the direct vote of all qualified adults. The referendum, which derives from Swiss practice, involves an issue that is provisionally determined in advance, but that is then 'referred' for a final decision by the whole electorate. This

the Entente Powers, far from aiding Poland, regarded her activities with irritation. Poland won her independence for twenty years by her own efforts under the leadership of Pilsudski.

The Fascist utopia, like that of the Communists, was false, and generated immense suffering. But there were those who dreamed it sincerely.

wars can be traced to a scuffle between a man and a boy, both of whom summon aid to their respective sides.

By 1939 the Gulag was the largest employer in Europe.