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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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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
Make
Napoleon
Like
Mistakes
Ones
Learned
Mistake
Study
History
Past

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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 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.
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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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If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
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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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The God of Battles will throw the dice that decide.
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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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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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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.
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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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Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
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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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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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A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.
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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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History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.
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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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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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The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.
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Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
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