Norman Davies

Historical change is like an avalanche. The starting point is a snow-covered mountainside that looks solid. All changes take place under the surface and are rather invisible.

The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course.

Poland is the natural bridge between East and West.

Traditionally, historians thought in terms of invasions: the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. It now seems much more likely that the resident population doesn't change as much as thought. The people stay put but are reculturalized by some new dominant culture.

States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing.

So long as classical education and classical prejudices prevailed, educated Englishmen inevitably saw ancient Britain as an alien land.

Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.

Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order.

Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice.

I first heard of General Anders and his army more than 50 years ago. I admired him then, and I admire him still; and I feel a special bond with the men, women and children whom he rescued from hunger, disease, and official abuse. Theirs is a story of endurance and fortitude that gives one faith in the human spirit.

I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time.

At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it.