A. J. P. Taylor Quotes

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.

No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.

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.

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.

If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.

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.

Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.

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.

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.

If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

The crusade against Communism was even more imaginary than the specter of Communism.

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.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.

Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently.

A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.

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

Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.