Quote

There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to yourself, well it doesn't matter much. An admirable feeling.

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
Much
Feelings
Admirable
Doesn
Asleep
Wells
Crash
Book
Floor
Well
Fast
Nothing
Saying
Woken
Matter
Feeling
Nodding
Going
Reading
Nicer

More quotes by A. J. P. Taylor

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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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Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
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Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.
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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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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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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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No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
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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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The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
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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 great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
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There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.
A. J. P. Taylor
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No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
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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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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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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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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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The Foreign Office knows no secrets.
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The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
A. J. P. Taylor