Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are no inevitabilities in history
To many, Heathrow in August is a paradigm of Hell.
Euphemism is a human device to conceal the horrors of reality.
I've been having an affair, but I still believe in family values.
Courage is the essential element in any great public man or woman.
Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
If we want foxes, to observe and delight in, we must have hunting.
The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.
Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics.
I like that lady - Sarah Palin. She's great. I like the cut of her jib.
A deliberate plan is not always necessary for the highest art; it emerges.
The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
It takes less than a decade for today's luxury to become a universal necessity.
As the CIA and KGB, like God and Satan, fight Miltonic battles across five continents.
When people talk about political correctness, the only element of any value is good manners.
You know you're an Arizona native when you have to look up "mass transit" in the dictionary.
Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.
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.
Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.
...the century's most radical vice... the notion that human beings can be shoveled around like concrete.
Wisdom lies not in possessing knowledge - which quickly becomes outdated - but in perpetually seeking it.
As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were.
The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.
Hell is being trapped in a night-club with the'beautiful people'and forced to live in a'luxury penthouse flat'.
For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.
Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.
Human beings are infinitely worth studying, especially the peculiarities that often go along with outstanding gifts.
I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy.
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.
Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth
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.
A capitalist economy hums when leading businessmen are bubbling with animal spirits and are prepared to sink their money into risky ventures.
In 1924 Mao took a Chinese friend, newly arrived from Europe, to see the notorious sign in the Shanghai park, 'Chinese and Dogs Not Allowed'.
John Major is what he is: a man from nowhere, going nowhere, heading for a well-merited obscurity as fast as his mediocre talents can carry him.
The freedom enjoyed in Western society under the rule of law and constitutional government explains both the quality of its civilization and its wealth.
Every good historian is almost by definition a revisionist. He looks at the accepted view of a particular historic episode or period with a very critical eye.
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.
In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 richness and variety, and indeed the advance, of our culture depend upon the continuation of this conflict [between conservatives and radicals], which is deeply rooted in human nature.
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.
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.
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.