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Paul Johnson Quotes

Paul Bede Johnson is an English journalist, popular historian, speechwriter, and author. Although associated with the political left in his early career, he is now a conservative popular historian.

Johnson was educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for and later editing the New Statesman magazine. A prolific writer, Johnson has written over 40 books and contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers. His sons include the journalist Daniel Johnson, founder of Standpoint, and the businessman Luke Johnson, former chairman of Channel 4. Wikipedia  

✵ 2. November 1928
Paul Johnson photo

Works

A History of the American People
Paul Johnson: 4 quotes0 likes

Famous Paul Johnson Quotes

“Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”

Paul Johnson

Modern Times (1983).

“It was part of Rousseau’s vanity that he believed himself incapable of base emotions. ‘I feel too superior to hate.’ ‘I love myself too much to hate anybody.”

Paul Johnson

Intellectuals (1988).

“A Stalin functionary admitted, "Innocent people were arrested: naturally - otherwise no one would be frightened. If people, he said, were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason.”

Paul Johnson

Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s (1983).

“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 book A History of the American People

A History of the American People (1997).

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