A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor FBAwas an English historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his television lectures. His combination of academic rigour and popular appeal led the historian Richard Overy to describe him as "the Macaulay of our age"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth25 March 1906
men behaviour infinite
We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.
freedom differences caves
If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
perfect soldier enemy
Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.
kings would-be duty
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.
beer past men
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.
winning history lessons
Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
history doubt
History is the great propagator of doubt.
country african-tribes groups
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.
book people events
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.
war break-out inevitable
No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
littles rage terrorist
Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently.
war fighting bismarck
Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.
wickedness shapes blunders
Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
history psychological sociology
All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.