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The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

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
Peace
Preserve
War
Preserves
Great
Carried
Provide
Army
Weight
Accumulated
Security
Armies
Nations
Antiwar

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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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We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
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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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A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.
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The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
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History is the great propagator of doubt.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.
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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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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
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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?
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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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There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.
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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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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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