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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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

• No one person is an island.

  

  Yehuda Berg
  • Person
  • Island

• 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

• It was loud in spots and less loud in other spots, and it had that quality which I have noticed in all violin solos of seeming to last much longer than it actually did.

  

  P. G. Wodehouse
  • Quality
  • Lasts
  • VIolin

• In politics, as in fishing, you don't have to be a genius. You just have to be smarter than the fish.

  

  Ze'ev Chafets
  • Political
  • Genius
  • Fishing

• The mind that puts everything in question, reaches, after a thousand interrogations, an almost total inertia, a situation which the inert, in fact, knows from the start, by instinct. For what is inertia but a congenital perplexity?

  

  Emil Cioran
  • Mind
  • Question

• By and by an obscure individual, a young man, rose up, and, in the midst of all Christendom, proclaimed the startling news that God had sent an angel to him;... This young man, some four years afterwards, was visited again by a holy angel.

  

  Orson Pratt
  • Up
  • God
  • Rose

• It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living.

  

  David Whyte
  • Life
  • Present

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

  

  A. J. P. Taylor
  • Past
  • Present