Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I very much wanted to live in Paris when I was in the army, and I was quite determined to. I could have become a dress designer: Dior was willing to take me on as an assistant, but he did not have an immediate vacancy. "

Paul Johnson

Live

Army

Related Quotes:

" The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell. "

" Courage is the essential element in any great public man or woman. "

" I don't write huge books any more. I used to write 1,000 printed pages, but now I write short books. I did one on Napoleon, 50,000 words - enjoyed doing that. He was a baddie. I did one on Churchill, which was a bestseller in New York, I'm glad to say. 50,000 words. He was a goodie. "

" The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear. "

" The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America - a marvelous country. But in a sense I don't worry about America because I think America has such huge strengths - particularly its freedom of thought and expression - that it's going to survive as a top nation for the foreseeable future. "

" Indeed, the study of universities and the great men and women who have attended them leads me to think that the best of these schools are characterized not so much by what they teach and how they teach it but by the extent they provide opportunities and encouragement for students to teach themselves. "

Paul Johnson

Women

Think

" One of the categories of people I don't like much are intellectuals. People say, 'Oh, you're an intellectual,' and I say, 'No!' What is an intellectual? An intellectual is somebody who thinks ideas are more important than people. "

Paul Johnson

Ideas

Important

" Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting - not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities - that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals. "

" Those who buy in to global warming wish to drastically curb human economic and industrial activities, regardless of the consequences for people, especially the poor. "

" I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy. "

" In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency. "

" A capitalist economy hums when leading businessmen are bubbling with animal spirits and are prepared to sink their money into risky ventures. "

" When people talk about political correctness, the only element of any value is good manners. "

" Is there any possibility of giving international air travel, which we all need and use and hate, a touch of glamour, or even of reliable, soulless efficiency? I suspect future historians will puzzle over our failure. But by then, of course, we shall be in the age of mass space travel, with its fresh and unimaginable crop of horrors. "

" Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics. "

" In the long term, it is desirable that the human race, faced with the prospect of extinction on Earth, should prepare an escape route for itself to another inhabitable planet. "

" The only thing to be said for air travel is speed. It makes possible travel on a scale unimaginable before our present age. Between the ages of 20 and four-score I visited every country in Europe, all save two in Latin America, ditto in Africa, and most of Asia, not counting eight trips to Australia and 60 to the United States - all by air. "

" To many, Heathrow in August is a paradigm of Hell. "

" Human beings are infinitely worth studying, especially the peculiarities that often go along with outstanding gifts. "

Paul Johnson

Human

Studying

" Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it. "

" The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty. "

" The planet Earth, though not threatened with destruction by man-made global warming, is by no means indestructible. There are many unpredictable events within our solar system, and still more outside it, that could make Earth uninhabitable by humans. "

" The United States is a concept that works very well, even in bad times. But that's no reason to think its structure can be superimposed with success on any other part of the world, particularly when times are terrible. "

" As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were. "

" Euphemism is a human device to conceal the horrors of reality. "

" Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them. "

" Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around - decisively - the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries. "

" The freedom enjoyed in Western society under the rule of law and constitutional government explains both the quality of its civilization and its wealth. "

" If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive. "

" One of the marvelous things about Churchill is that whatever he was doing, whether fighting or arguing or despairing or bouncing about full of energy, jokes are never far away. "