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The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.

Paul Johnson

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Paul Johnson
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: November 2
Editor
Historian
Journalist
Speechwriter
Writer
Manchester
England
Paul Bede Johnson
Always
Meaningless
Nearly
Meaningful
Word
Used
Today

More quotes by Paul Johnson

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There are no inevitabilities in history
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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
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As the CIA and KGB, like God and Satan, fight Miltonic battles across five continents.
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You know you're an Arizona native when you have to look up mass transit in the dictionary.
Paul Johnson
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I like that lady - Sarah Palin. She's great. I like the cut of her jib.
Paul Johnson
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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
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Hell is being trapped in a night-club with the'beautiful people'and forced to live in a'luxury penthouse flat'.
Paul Johnson
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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.
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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
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Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.
Paul Johnson
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If we want foxes, to observe and delight in, we must have hunting.
Paul Johnson
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At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species.
Paul Johnson
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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
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The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.
Paul Johnson
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As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were.
Paul Johnson
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Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth
Paul Johnson
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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
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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.
Paul Johnson
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Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
Paul Johnson
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If I see a door ajar, I push on it to see how far it will open, and if it opens wide I go through it.
Paul Johnson