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.

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.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

Despite this lamentable lack of balance in our education I do not believe that either children or adults in my country are permeated by a widespread hostility to Germany.

History provides no precise guidelines.

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.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war.

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.

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.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.

The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.

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.

The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War.

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

People know they are lacking something, they are constantly wanting some kind of spiritual guidance.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

Wisely used history can give pleasure and provide us with a useful tool; but we should not become its slaves.

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.

It depends on how it is done but what we are drifting into, which is that people grow up without any sense of a spiritual dimension to life, is just impoverishing.

A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled politics.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

There is nothing false or arrogant about German pride in German technical and business skills.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

But I think one of the reasons I tend to stay in the water most of the time is I distrust the comfort.

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world - it is thin.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

Distrust and caution are the parents of security.

What we need is not more distrust and division. What we need now is acceptance.

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection.

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

While these attitudes are more visible when direct- ed at government, there is ample evidence that many working people distrust their own union as much as they do the corporation they work for.

Princess Rose should indeed be a TV movie, assuming something doesn't go wrong. I don't know how good a movie it will be, because the way movie folk think is different from the way writers think, and I distrust what isn't done my way. This is what I call a healthy paranoia.

You feel yourself working to show something. I've learned to distrust that feeling.

I believed that I was being forced to sacrifice my family and my career in defense of the Communist Party, from which I had long been separated and which I had grown to dislike and distrust.

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.

The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are.

We need to reach that happy stage of our development when differences and diversity are not seen as sources of division and distrust, but of strength and inspiration.

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.

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.