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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
Children
Answer
Believe
Question
Answers
Happened
Matured
Child
Historian
Next
Believing
Firsts
Narrative
First
Function

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Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.
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When I write I have no loyalty except to historical truth as I see it and care no more about British achievements and mistakes than any other.
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History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.
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Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery.
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There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.
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In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.
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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.
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We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
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Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
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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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Conformity may give you a quiet life it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
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The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.
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Psychoanalysts believe that the only normal people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.
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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.
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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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No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
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Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.
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If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.
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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.
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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.
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