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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
Way
Objects
Fight
Though
Fighting
War
Power
Able
Remaining
Great
Object

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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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Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently.
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The Foreign Office knows no secrets.
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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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Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.
A. J. P. Taylor
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History is the great propagator of doubt.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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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Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
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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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The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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 is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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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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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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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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
A. J. P. Taylor
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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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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
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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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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