“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.”

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving t…" by A.J.P. Taylor?
A.J.P. Taylor photo
A.J.P. Taylor 15
Historian 1906–1990

Related quotes

Paul Morphy photo
Paulo Coelho photo

“Many people don't allow themselves to love… because there are a lot of things at risk a lot of future and a lot of past.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Erik Naggum photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Lawrence Lessig photo

“A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.”

Free Culture (2004)
Context: A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written.

Larry Hogan photo
Anthony Watts photo

“That the climate has always changed. It has never been static. In the past it has seen extremes hotter and colder than what we experience today. So change is normal.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts http://townhall.com/columnists/billsteigerwald/2009/04/20/talking_climate_change_with_anthony_watts/page/full/, townhall.com, Apr 20, 2009.
2009

Richard Rohr photo

“Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

William Ralph Inge photo

Related topics