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History is the great propagator of doubt.

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
Great
Doubt
History

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The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
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We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
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In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.
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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
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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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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.
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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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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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Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.
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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.
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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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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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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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A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.
A. J. P. Taylor
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Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently.
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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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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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No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
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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