Donald Kagan
American historian (1932-2021)
Donald Kagan (May 1, 1932 – August 6, 2021) was an American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. Kagan was considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history and is notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War.
Quotes
edit- Seeing what Hitler and the Nazis had done, I knew there was real evil in the world, and after that, I couldn’t take pacifists seriously.
- 2002 [1]
- The peace does not keep itself, and though it may be intellectually unfashionable to say so, the world needs a policeman.
- 2002 [2]
- We are the product of Western civilization, so it’s necessary to understand yourself before you can understand anyone else.
- 2002 [3]
- In my judgment, the best history is one that tells a story and combines it with analysis. The natural way for an historian to analyze things includes answering with a tale. The combination of telling an interesting story and answering questions along the way that an intelligent person is interested in hearing about--that's history at its peak, in my opinion.
- Concerns about the decline of liberty in our whole polity is what threatens all of the aspects of it, including democracy.
- 2013 [5]
