Samuel Johnson Quotes
All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness but malignity; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted.
Johnson, Samuel. The Rambler, No. 173. J. Payne and J. Bouquet, 1751.
When asked to explain why the U. S. had supplied $11 billion to the Soviet Union in lend-lease aid during World War II:
Muller warns of a very common error made by most politicians and critics who are faced with populism. To ignore them is also self defeating. Best results seem to come from just calmly present factual counter evidence to whatever is being alleged at the moment. And to acknowledge their right in a democracy to think as they do, but we respectfully disagree. The respect is very important in interacting with populists whose major complaint is most often that they are not regarded with dignity in the society as it now exists. And for many educated, above-average intellect people, there is a difficulty in extending their egalitarian philosophy to those who do not honor, respect or even understand the major tenets and norms of intellectual interaction. In most cases, the politicians who have populist appeal not only treat the people with great dignity and appreciation (feigned or real), but take of the cry for their complaints and suspicions in more eloquent oratory that the disaffected people are able to themselves, and that is a great part of the seemingly magic hold that the populist politician seems to have over his constituency.
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".
