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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.

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
Though
Fighting
War
Power
Able
Remaining
Great
Object
Way
Objects
Fight

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The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.
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The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
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Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.
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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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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.
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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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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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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 greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.
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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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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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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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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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Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.
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If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
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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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History is the great propagator of doubt.
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Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
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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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