Nobody knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a place for themselves while the weak and peaceable have gone to the wall.

In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought.

Claims of right and insistence upon obligations may depend upon treaty stipulations, or upon the rules of international law, or upon the sense of natural justice applied to the circumstances of a particular case, or upon disputed facts.

The theoretical postulate of all diplomatic discussion between nations is the assumed willingness of every nation to do justice.

When I was in my early twenties, I used to grow all sorts of very weird beards. All of them awful in retrospect. I had Civil War beards for a while, then Mennonite beards.

I did a few documentaries as co-director and cameraman. I started off shooting a film about the war in Rhodesia. Then I did a film about an 'around the world' yacht race with a friend, and we spent nine months on a yacht. The film was about how people get on in confined spaces under extreme stress.

A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.

I don't really think much about how I would have fared in the Second World War. It's a topic that has to be treated with respect and subtlety, and you can't just go in all guns blazing and make an epic action film.