Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson
British journalist, author, and historian who edited the New Statesman and penned over forty works, including the 1959 novel, Left of Centre, and the 1997 non-fiction work, A History of the American People. He also wrote four works on art and architecture and two memoirs.
NationalityBritish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth2 November 1928
america world mixtures
Scanning the newspapers and absorbing with a mixture of incredulity and indignation the enormities they report, I conclude that what England lacks today is, quite simply, sense.
beautiful children railroads
As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were.
men political obscurity
John Major is what he is: a man from nowhere, going nowhere, heading for a well-merited obscurity as fast as his mediocre talents can carry him.
august hell paradigm
To many, Heathrow in August is a paradigm of Hell.
strong book passion
This book is dedicated to the people of America--strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.
meaningful today used
The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.
writing lasts paper
The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them.
evil envy political
The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.
running america leader
It is one of the many ironies of this period that, at a time when the intelligentsia were excoriating Mellon for tax-evasion, and contrasting the smooth-running Soviet planned economy with the breakdown in America, he was secretly exploiting the frantic necessities of the Soviet leaders to form the basis of one of America's most splendid public collections
intellectual tests feels
For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.
luxury today universal
It takes less than a decade for today's luxury to become a universal necessity.
eye views history
Every good historian is almost by definition a revisionist. He looks at the accepted view of a particular historic episode or period with a very critical eye.
passion men views
His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the degree to which they accepted his.
princess opposites lunch
I was very fond of Princess Diana. She used to have me over to lunch to ask my advice. I'd give her good advice, and she'd say: 'I entirely agree. Paul, you're so right.' Then she'd go and do the opposite.