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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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Paul Johnson
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: November 2
Editor
Historian
Journalist
Speechwriter
Writer
Manchester
England
Paul Bede Johnson
Publishers
Pablo
Mets
Crook
Evil
Maxwell
Persons
Crooks
Person
Picasso
Ever
Publisher
Toss
Robert

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
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The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.
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It takes less than a decade for today's luxury to become a universal necessity.
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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.
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I like that lady - Sarah Palin. She's great. I like the cut of her jib.
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If we want foxes, to observe and delight in, we must have hunting.
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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.
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Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.
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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.
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You know you're an Arizona native when you have to look up mass transit in the dictionary.
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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've been having an affair, but I still believe in family values.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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