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.
Courage is the essential element in any great public man or woman.
A capitalist economy hums when leading businessmen are bubbling with animal spirits and are prepared to sink their money into risky ventures.
Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.
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.
Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
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.
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.
Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics.
I’ve been having an affair, but I still believe in family values.
If we want foxes, to observe and delight in, we must have hunting.
Hell is being trapped in a night-club with the’beautiful people’and forced to live in a’luxury penthouse flat’.
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.
If you depart from moral absolutes, you go into a bottomless pit. Communism and Nazism were catastrophic evils which both derived from moral relativism. Their differences were minor compared to their similarities.
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.
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.
The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.
I like that lady – Sarah Palin. She’s great. I like the cut of her jib.
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.
The word ‘meaningful’ when used today is nearly always meaningless.