A. J. P. Taylor Quotes

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

A. J. P. Taylor

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• Present

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Quotes to Explore

• North Korea, under its thirtysomething Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is no country for old men. The latest casualty in Kim's ongoing purge of the senior military command was the defense minister, Hyon Yong-chol, who reportedly committed the classic old man's offense of falling asleep in a meeting.

  

  Barbara Demick
  • Men
  • Country
  • Man

• You know when you're 14 and terrified to talk to a girl? I didn't suffer much from that. It seemed very natural to me to talk to girls.

  

  Adam Levine Maroon 5
  • Girl
  • Know
  • Me

• You can't judge your characters or otherwise; it's not about you, it's about them.

  

  Edgar Ramirez
  • You
  • Judge
  • Them

• I hope Obama gets scary in the next four years, 'cuz he ain't gotta worry about getting re-elected.

  

  Samuel L. Jackson
  • Hope
  • Worry
  • Scary

• Just celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had.

  

  Magic Johnson
  • Life
  • You
  • Celebrate

• Skid Row would probably be my favorite Jersey band.

  

  Eddie Trunk
  • Band
  • Favorite
  • Jersey

• There are epic downsides to living a somewhat public life. The upshot of that is there's nothing to hide. It's a relief in a way. There's nothing about me that can't be said.

  

  Natasha Lyonne
  • Life
  • Way
  • Hide

• I was thinking things had changed: that the next generation of men weren't as institutionally misogynist as the previous were. And then, suddenly, the Internet came along and gave them a platform to voice their feelings anonymously. And boy, did the bile come out.

  

  Val McDermid
  • Men
  • Thinking
  • Boy

• When you think of all the conflicts we have - whether those conflicts are local, whether they are regional or global - these conflicts are often over the management, the distribution of resources. If these resources are very valuable, if these resources are scarce, if these resources are degraded, there is going to be competition.

  

  Wangari Maathai
  • You
  • Competition
  • Management

• The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.

  

  Iris Chang
  • Women
  • Slavery
  • Medical

• We set up a situation and let you interact with it and see the consequences of your choice. That's what gaming does.

  

  Warren Spector
  • Up
  • Choice
  • Consequences

• Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.

  

  Damien Hirst
  • Sometimes
  • Better
  • Drunk

• The only shoes that look futuristic are Crocs, but they would be terrible to use in a futuristic movie.

  

  Olivier Theyskens
  • Movie
  • Look
  • Shoes

• Learning about factory farms and their horrendous treatment of animals is what made me become vegetarian in the first place. I also support the education of the public on adopting pets from animal shelters or saving homeless animals off the street in lieu of buying them from pet shops.

  

  Laura Mennell
  • Education
  • Support
  • Learning

• The names of common flowers change from decade to decade, so I spent a lot of time with old outdated dictionaries, with awful flower names like 'mouse-eared chickweed.'

  

  Vanessa Diffenbaugh
  • Time
  • Change
  • Flower

• I am definitely a person of color.

  

  Vin Diesel
  • Person
  • Color

• The cultural expectation should be if there's infidelity, the marriage is more important than fidelity.

  

  Dan Savage
  • Important
  • Marriage
  • Expectation

• Most historians and other writers of what we now consider 'primary sources' simply didn't think about women and their contribution to society. They took it for granted, except when that contribution or its lack directly affected men.

  

  Tansy Rayner Roberts
  • Men
  • Women
  • Society

• I would walk into my office, and I would close the door, and I would say, 'I won't cry, I won't cry, I won't cry'... At least, I wasn't going to let them see me cry.

  

  Dawn Steel
  • Door

• God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! It is people's secrets we want to know - it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.

  

  August Strindberg
  • People
  • God
  • Trying

• I would say that the first 'X-Men' was the hardest. It took us a long time to get it going.

  

  Lauren Shuler Donner
  • Time
  • Men
  • Long

• I really had a problem with being 'the man.' I'm past it now, but that was my insecurity. I ran from that. I was cool with being No. 3 on the call sheet or No. 2.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • Man
  • Past
  • Cool

• Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.

  

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Country
  • Today
  • Society

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

  

  A. J. P. Taylor
  • Past
  • Present