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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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
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War
History
Human
Blunders
Humans
Wickedness
Witty
Shape
Shapes
More quotes by A. J. P. Taylor
The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
A. J. P. Taylor
There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.
A. J. P. Taylor
Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery.
A. J. P. Taylor
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
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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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
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
Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.
A. J. P. Taylor
Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently.
A. J. P. Taylor
Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.
A. J. P. Taylor
If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.
A. J. P. Taylor
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
We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
A. J. P. Taylor
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.
A. J. P. Taylor
A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.
A. J. P. Taylor
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
The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.
A. J. P. Taylor
The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
A. J. P. Taylor
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.
A. J. P. Taylor
