Quote

Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth

Paul Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Johnson
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: November 2
Editor
Historian
Journalist
Speechwriter
Writer
Manchester
England
Paul Bede Johnson
Represent
Appeals
Rule
Feeling
Feelings
Truth
Nothing
People
Intellectuals

More quotes by Paul Johnson

Image
A Stalin functionary admitted, Innocent people were arrested: naturally - otherwise no one would be frightened. If people were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason.
Paul Johnson
Image
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.
Paul Johnson
Image
As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were.
Paul Johnson
Image
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.
Paul Johnson
Image
Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.
Paul Johnson
Image
I like that lady - Sarah Palin. She's great. I like the cut of her jib.
Paul Johnson
Image
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.
Paul Johnson
Image
I've been having an affair, but I still believe in family values.
Paul Johnson
Image
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.
Paul Johnson
Image
The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.
Paul Johnson
Image
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.
Paul Johnson
Image
It takes less than a decade for today's luxury to become a universal necessity.
Paul Johnson
Image
Hell is being trapped in a night-club with the'beautiful people'and forced to live in a'luxury penthouse flat'.
Paul Johnson
Image
You know you're an Arizona native when you have to look up mass transit in the dictionary.
Paul Johnson
Image
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.
Paul Johnson
Image
There are no inevitabilities in history
Paul Johnson
Image
Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.
Paul Johnson
Image
If we want foxes, to observe and delight in, we must have hunting.
Paul Johnson
Image
In the past, the U.S. has shown its capacity to reinvent its gifts for leadership. During the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Nixon abdication and the Ford and Carter presidencies, the whole nation peered into the abyss, was horrified by what it saw and elected Ronald Reagan as president, which began a national resurgence.
Paul Johnson
Image
The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.
Paul Johnson