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I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, What happened next?

A. J. P. Taylor

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A. J. P. Taylor
Age: 84 †
Born: 1906
Born: March 25
Died: 1990
Died: September 7
Historian
Historian Of The Modern Age
Journalist
University Teacher
Alan John Percivale Taylor
Happened
Matured
Child
Historian
Next
Believing
Firsts
Narrative
First
Function
Children
Answer
Believe
Question
Answers

More quotes by A. J. P. Taylor

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The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
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In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world.
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We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
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Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.
A. J. P. Taylor
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Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.
A. J. P. Taylor
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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
A. J. P. Taylor
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The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
A. J. P. Taylor
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American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.
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If there had been a strong democratic sentiment in Germany, Hitler would never have come to power . [Germans] deserved what they got when they went round crying for a hero.
A. J. P. Taylor
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No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
A. J. P. Taylor
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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.
A. J. P. Taylor
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The Foreign Office knows no secrets.
A. J. P. Taylor
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George VI in the conventional parlance was a Good King who sacrificed his life to his sense of duty. If we are to have monarchs it would be hard to find a better one.
A. J. P. Taylor
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Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery.
A. J. P. Taylor
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Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.
A. J. P. Taylor
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All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.
A. J. P. Taylor
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One of the penalties of being president of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without drinking anything except Californian wine.
A. J. P. Taylor
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There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to yourself, well it doesn't matter much. An admirable feeling.
A. J. P. Taylor
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History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.
A. J. P. Taylor
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Psychoanalysts believe that the only normal people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.
A. J. P. Taylor