A. J. P. Taylor Quotes

Those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.

The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.

You must labor until we have dominion over the minds and bodies of every important person in your nation.

I am now The Establishment. There's nothing I can do about it.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I just want to conquer people and their souls.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh.

Power tends to get confused with repression.

The hazing experience and then the subsequent participation in the group forces its members to maintain the status quo and traditions at all costs. It demands mindlessness and unquestioned loyalty, resulting in boring people who have little ability to think for themselves or have an opposing viewpoint from those who have the most social power.

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.

Powerlessness also corrupts.

Watch out for the man who talks of putting things in order. Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

There is no more contemptible poison than power over one's fellow men.

For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will eventually make man agree to his own destruction.

Power is being able to affect the hegemony of existing systems.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.

Don’t you shit me George. You and I know who has the power in Alabama.

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?