Paul Johnson Quotations

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.

Germany's Angela Merkel exudes an atmosphere of elderly exhaustion and pooped-out pessimism. Britain's David Cameron, though by nature exuberant, feels he has to look and sound glum. And France's leader, Francois Hollande, seems determined to drive every successful businessman out of the country.

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.

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

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

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.

Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof - of which history offers so many examples - that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science.

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.

Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I like that lady - Sarah Palin. She's great. I like the cut of her jib.

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.

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.

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.

It would be wrong to say I enjoy having rows, because that would be un-Christian. If people attack me, then I respond, or if they do very wicked things. Then they must be brought to book.

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

Where the quest for knowledge is relatively, and now almost absolutely, unrestrained, the public benefit will be great, especially where the certainty of the law ensures that knowledge is rewarded. This is exactly the combination that is the foundation of wealth-creation.

We're starting over. This team hasn't done anything yet.

We're seeing consistency in pricing strategies. This shouldn't change that.

We have to have a plan to try and counter that. We know that if we don't come and play really hard and with a lot of intensity that we'll get embarrassed. And we don't like to get embarrassed.

We'll see in a few weeks how much separation there is. I'd like to have a good idea who the No. 1 and No. 2 are coming out of spring.

There are a lot of different ways to categorize leaders. There are guys who are good football players who haven't done so well in the hall. There are some guys who do great in the hall who may not be very good football players.

We're looking at Maryland for what it is, ... A season opener that we want to win.

Lying is a terrible thing in any circumstances,

Making points for your team to win the overall title is the best part.

Leo brings a very broad and deep level of experience to Kelley Blue Book that stretches across the automotive industry -- from optimizing dealership operations to maximizing the opportunities of the Internet and e-commerce. He's coming on board to lead an aggressive growth strategy across multiple business units.

She was a one-in-a-million person, ... You don't run into someone like her often, and the team is going to have a very hard time replacing her.

She had a very magnetic personality. People were drawn to her warmth and good humor, but she was very centered on others, ... If you asked her about herself, you'd just get silence, but she was always ready to say great things about her teammates.

Mr. Obama would be a disheartening president even during a super boom, with his grim demeanor and empty rhetoric, as well as his obvious hatred of business bravado.

Online brokers face a lot of challenges with technical issues -- Merrill is no different. They aren't accustomed to operating at Internet speeds.

Now that it is dedicated to the bell, it can never be torn down.

Right now, Lamar is the guy we're going with at quarterback, ... We just have to find out what's wrong and why he's cramping up and fix it.

Right now, I haven't passed those prices along to my customers. If they stay up, I will have to eventually. It's probably going to be a difficult time for the next few months.

(Navy) football history is certainly part of the current group of players' education. But they only go back as far as the days of the 1950s and '60s.

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.

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.

I would rather go in with high expectations than no expectations, but that's just what they are -- expectations. This team hasn't won a game.

I got my first delivery this week since the hurricane.

I'd like to get one win, ... I'm not thinking about getting six wins.

But Cisco has not grown through acquisitions. They've grown despite their acquisitions. The primary growth, as we saw in the quarter, was clearly from routers, which is Cisco's historical product.

But Cisco has not grown through acquisitions, ... They've grown despite their acquisitions. The primary growth, as we saw in the quarter, was clearly from routers, which is Cisco's historical product.

For the same reason Ascend wanted Stratus' technology, Lucent is also interested.

The purpose of trying to attract these type of investors isn't necessarily to increase commission revenue but to get control over their assets. Presumably, these active investors have significant assets. That's the real goal of E*Trade.

Kevin's played a vital role in helping us get the program turned around at Navy and we certainly appreciate the effort of both he and his family. He's a highly motivated individual and I'm sure he will do a great job for Georgetown football.

I think it's being interpreted differently than what he wanted.

It hope it settles down and we get some good training in.

Lad Of The Manor is probably the best weight-for-age horse in Australia at the moment.

I thought Troy Goss did some good things today. Hampton was a little rusty today, but got better towards the end of practice.

I think it's really more a tribute to what the Naval Academy's all about. We're fortunate here in San Diego that we have some military bases and a lot of people are stationed in the area, and hopefully they're proud of what's going on at the academy.

I think that some of the effect will be down the road, like crawfish season for next year. I think that naturally prices will be higher for a couple of reasons, fuel prices and the hurricane.

I think they had some fun and played, but I don't know what you make of that. The conditions were tough and we've got some guys hurt. ... Both teams made enough mistakes to lose 10 times.

I think the whole thing was kind of railroaded.

I think there's a lever on the side of your chair that might make you appear a little taller than you are,

I think there's a couple of reasons: One, I don't think they understand it. I think they see it and hear 'option' and think that's 3 yards and a cloud of dust, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Over the last half-century, anti-Semitism has been the essential theology of the Arab world. The Arabs have wasted trillions in oil royalties on weapons of war and propaganda . . . In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law.

Like many physical diseases, anti-Semitism is highly infectious, and can become endemic in certain localities and societies. Though a disease of the mind, it is by no means confined to weak, feeble, or commonplace intellects; as history sadly records, its carriers have included men and women of otherwise powerful and subtle thoughts.

It feels good. There's a rush in getting to go down and fight fire in different country you've never seen before, or in a different area.

I still have questions about the subject matter but it's more about the manner in which it was done. It was voted on after midnight without anyone (from the public) there, and it was the first time some of the board members saw it.

It does not always pay to have a golden tongue unless one has the ability to hold it

I think the stocks are going to do better, because everyone is going to realize it is not a disaster, and maybe the worst is behind us,

That's the thing with scheduling, you can't predict what teams are going to do from year to year, ... Right now, one of our team's goals is to make it to a bowl game, and that's a lot easier to do if you start 1-1 instead of 0-2.

That's two weeks in a row we've been in a game at the end and they made more plays that we did, ... We didn't get it done at the end. We need to find a way to win.

I would like to see Brian become consistent and show that he's matured enough to make good decisions. He doesn't have to go out and win games, he just can't lose them.

We can probably put those concerns to rest,

We believe their leading competitors will continue to take market share from Cisco at an accelerated pace throughout the slowdown -- especially in the service provider focused product arena,

We know this city is going to be what we make it.

We came up short and didn't produce anything like what we're capable of,

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.

We don't have a playbook. I found that if you have playbooks, they end up on eBay and everywhere else.

We are creating a unique connection. We are doing something that the city has never done historically.

This season didn't start the way Lamar wanted, but he persevered and got better as the year went along. I think Lamar was clearly playing his best football down the stretch.

The question is now when they are going to move him to another room.

We were not in sync in defining the scope of the project.

We believe Juniper has the potential to dominate the market.

We have to build new networks to support the Internet, for one simple reason, there isn't a single viewer in the audience today that's happy with their Internet performance. They're not happy with the performance of the bandwidth coming into their home or business. They're not happy with responsiveness of Web pages, they're not happy about the ability to not download fat files.

We will have to play it out and see what happens, ... We've played two quarterbacks in every game; I don't know why we wouldn't in this one.

We're thin, ... But we were thin last year and we were lucky enough to get to the state meet. This year, on paper, it looks the same.

We wanted to run and we wanted to get easy buckets. Combine that with the fact that we made a lot of shots, and it really turned into a ... fabulous game.

We'll have to see. Two weeks into the spring, we'll have an idea of the separation.

What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria or meningitis makes sense.

We got permission from the two churches because this their land. Then we went to the historical society and the city council to get permission.

We're going to turn up the intensity on him a bit and see how he handles it.

Brian has shown some ability. He needs to work on making good decisions. We'll see how he reacts to in-your-face.

As stressful as the holidays are, they can be even more so for those who have recently experienced the death of a loved one. Many people fail to realize they don't have to do things exactly as they have in the past. They can make changes to make the holiday season easier. Failing to consider changes often adds to the stress level and makes dealing with the situation even harder.

As I have said before, they have 65 Parade All-Americans and we have 65 men who have marched in a parade.

Essentially, what they argued is that Cisco has grown through acquisitions, and people are valuing it at a very high price because of its growth.

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.

It would be good. Because, eventually no doubt, it will be developed.

I understand why the decision was made, but it was unfortunate that it came at a time when we were anxious to play,

So sometimes it's hard to know who's got the ball.

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.