A.J.P. Taylor: Quotes about history

A.J.P. Taylor was Historian. Explore interesting quotes on history.

A.J.P. Taylor: 30 quotes 0 likes

“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.”

A.J.P. Taylor

English History 1914 – 1945 ([1965] 1975), "Revised Bibliography", p. 729

People , Books , History , Time

“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

"The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p 34
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

Men , Pleasure , Music , History

“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.”

A.J.P. Taylor

"The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 14
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

Life , History , Universe , Change

“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

The First World War ([1963] 1970) p. 165

World , History , Birth , Sense

“Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.”

A.J.P. Taylor

Referring to Napoleon III, in "Mistaken Lessons from the Past", The Listener (6 June 1963)

History , Study , Learning , Past