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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.

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
Would
Democratic
Sentiment
Hero
Hitler
Went
Crying
History
Sentiments
Strong
Germany
Power
Round
Nazism
Come
Rounds
Deserved
Never
Cry
Germans

More quotes by A. J. P. Taylor

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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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The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
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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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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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History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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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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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History is the great propagator of doubt.
A. J. P. Taylor
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No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
A. J. P. Taylor
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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.
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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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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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
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Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
A. J. P. Taylor
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The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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.
A. J. P. Taylor
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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
A. J. P. Taylor