A. J. P. Taylor Quotes

You can't win them all.

History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.

You win a few, you lose a few.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose - to accept defeat. To learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying!

I believe history teaches us a categorical lesson: that once a people are determined to become free, then nothing in the world can stop them reaching their goal.

My Mama Moved Among the Days My Mama moved among the days like a dreamwalker in a field; seemed like what she touched was here seemed like what touched her couldn't hold, she got us almost through the high grass then seemed like she turned around and ran right back in right back on in

The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game. The second-greatest feeling is to lose a major league game.

When you are an historian, there's probably nothing that matters more than to be recognized by your colleagues in your own profession. I was lucky enough to win the Pulitzer Prize for History. I had to give a talk right after that to some young people. The most important thing to tell them, I think, is that you can't ever know that it's going to turn out that way.

I know there are certain things that I just can't win.

Italians can't win the game against you, but you can lose the game against the Italians.

Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

Life is more about losing than winning.

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

You can't win every week.

I don't think it's going to work out. Winning...won't help in any case. Because...she came here with me. - Peeta Mellark

Everything to lose, nothing to lose, someone's taken it, or you've lost it.

You can't win all the time. There are guys out there who are better than you.

Americans don't win. Our country doesn't win. We don't win at trade. We don't win. We can't beat ISIS.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden's fatal field, When shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was her shield!

Sometimes you have to lose to win again.

I have to. I've been fighting it all night. I'm going to lose. My battle is as futile as a woman feeling the first pangs of labor and deciding it's an inconvenient time to give birth. Nature wins out. It always does.