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Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.

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
War
Killed
Thousands
Kill
Bismarck
Necessary
Idealists
Fight
Idealist
Century
Twentieth
Millions
Fought
Fighting
Wars

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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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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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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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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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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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If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
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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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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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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.
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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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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.
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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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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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The Foreign Office knows no secrets.
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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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The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
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We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
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