The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.
Paul JohnsonHell is being trapped in a night-club with the'beautiful people'and forced to live in a'luxury penthouse flat'.
Paul JohnsonThe most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.
Paul Johnson