Douglas Hurd famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.
-- Douglas Hurd

#War #Rights #Agreement
Wisely used history can give pleasure and provide us with a useful tool; but we should not become its slaves.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Giving #Tools #Slave
People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled 'politics'.
-- Douglas Hurd

#People
Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.
-- Douglas Hurd

#People #Way #Prison
Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Men #Action #Justified
Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Europe #Germany #Economic
History provides no precise guidelines.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Guidelines
But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Character #Suffering #Germany
A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Iraq #Spurs #Might
There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Past #Ideas #Understanding
Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Growing Up #Europe #Years
It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Country #Teaching #Lessons
We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Past #Judgment #Enjoyable
Ten Downing Street is a house, not an office. That is its most important characteristic.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Office #House #Important
No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Military #War #Successful
The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.
-- Douglas Hurd

#Europe #America #Leaving
We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.
-- Douglas Hurd

#War #Iraq #Germany

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