By Anthony Doerr

Werner clears his throat. “We act in the interest of peace.” It is, verbatim, a sentence he and Jutta heard on Deutschlandsender radio three days before. “In the interest of the world.”

…

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”

(Doerr 2014, 84)

References

Doerr, Anthony. 2014. All the Light We Cannot See. N.p.: Scribner.

ISBN 978-1-4767-4658-6