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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.

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
Went
Opinion
Hands
Past
Power
Prestige
Great
Grandeur
Men
Beer
Wealth

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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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The Foreign Office knows no secrets.
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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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Psychoanalysts believe that the only normal people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.
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Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.
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History is the great propagator of doubt.
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A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.
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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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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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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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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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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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
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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The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
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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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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.
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