A Quote by A. J. P. Taylor

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.
…the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.
The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth century ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.
Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.
Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide; and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself - whoever himself may be - is immortal; and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality.
I don't know if Trump was readily prepared for having an entire embedded bureaucracy trying to undermine him. But he's gonna be able to deal with it because he's faced these kinds of things in his life before. And I think that he is so committed to what he thinks will make this country great, so committed to the things he believes will reverse the fortunes of this country, no way is he going to be rendered depressed and despondent and give up the agenda. He's tougher than that. He's certainly more committed than that.
The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world's scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying.
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
That particular octopus committed suicide, didn't he? He stabbed himself with his own beak.
It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.
You know, I always say musicians, they can do it on their own. They can practice their violin on their own. A painter can paint by himself. A writer can write by himself. But an actor needs a group, and the hardest thing about expanding your ability and your craft is to have a group to do it with that is of a caliber where you can grow even more.
There's no reason - not yet, anyway - to believe [Bob] Dylan himself endorses such an attitude; or that he would think of himself as a more profound and worthy recipient than, for instance, any of the brilliant Motown or girl-group lyricists who are more likely to be awarded a Nobel prize for chemistry than for literature. Whether there is more truth and humanity in his best lyrics than in Abba's, or less, is unquantifiable, and it would be meretricious to attempt such a calculation in contesting an argument he has been dragged into.
I have generally never committed to things in my life but I am very committed to this relationship. Soha is one of my best friends and sometimes I treat her like a friend more than a girlfriend.
In no other action can our Savior be considered more tender or more loving than in this, in which He, as it were, annihilates Himself and reduces Himself to food, that He may penetrate our souls and unite Himself to the hearts of His faithful.
When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
He[Napoleon] had destroyed only one thing: the Jacobin Revolution, the dream of equality, liberty and fraternity, and of the people rising in its majesty to shake off oppression. It was a more powerful myth than his, for after his fall it was this, and not his memory, which inspired the revolutions of the nineteenth century, even in his own country.
He who gives himself to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there can be nothing nobler.
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