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Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery.

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
Place
Snobbery
Everything
Escapes
Looks
Manchester
Good
Characteristic
Vice
Characteristics
Vices
England

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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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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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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.
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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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There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.
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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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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
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History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.
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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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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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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 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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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.
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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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History is the great propagator of doubt.
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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 crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.
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If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
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Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.
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