Paul Johnson Quotes

The reality is that art has often risen to greater heights than the people who created it. Many flawed artists have created great works of art. You have to decide if you are going to listen to Richard Wagner's music or not because he was very anti-Semitic.

However people feel about Kanye is their opinion, but I think he's a genius.

Ismail Merchant was just the most seductive, passionate, outrageous, driven, genius of a man.

Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

… he must deceive, misrepresent, leave false impressions … and trust to charm, loyalty and the result to make up for it…. A great man cannot be a good man.

Behind a mask of apparent openness and accountability to which once-trusted accountancy firms and business analysts were willing collaborators, a raft of corrupt practices has undermined the livelihoods and expectations of millions.

Invariably, when people read the headline about Martin Shkreli, they hate Martin Shkreli. When they get to know Martin Shkreli, they love Martin Shkreli.

I'm just the biggest Kanye fan. I think he's a genius.

... men of highest genius have been too frequently of extremely shaky morals.

Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.

Most of us do know we have no immortality. And when you've found a genius, someone who has already purchased his immortality in musical or literary terms, it's maddening.

He was, as Billy Name said in the acclaimed Ric Burns documentary about Andy Warhol, uninterested in being a second-tier artist. He was uninterested in being a first-tier artist! He wanted to be, you know, a god. Someone who completely changed the...he wanted to be Zeus with the lightning bolt and nothing less would have satisfied him.

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups.

Corruption exists because there is too much, not too little, market.

Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater. That always sounds so funny to people, comparing yourself to someone in the past that has done so much, and in your life you’re not even allowed to think that you can do as much. That’s a mentality that suppresses humanity.

Prince.. a true artist in every sense of the world.Gone way too soon.

Donald Trump was tainted every kind of way you could imagine. I mean, no way in the world that Donald Trump is a champion of working people. He has hurt workers in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Florida, multiple bankruptcies, never showed his taxes. I don't know any good thing this guy's ever done. And yet, because he was able to throw hate and poison on Hillary Clinton, he was able to somehow prevail at least until the Electoral College. I think he was skilled at just sort of, like, keeping the attention on anyone but himself. He is the most outrageous person ever to win a presidential election.

I know that some of the great painters and some of the great artists didn't even start to 'peak', as you say, till they were in their fifties and sixties. And God knows, history is full of artistic people that weren't even recognized till they were dead and gone.

Disney is a delight, someone who ... sweeps those around him along on his dream.

Let me tell you, Alex. He's a crook. He's based here in Miami. He's a nasty piece of work." "He's mexican" Troy added.

When I think of Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven in the age of the romantics

Don't be too precious about your craft... there's only 26 letters and 12 notes, and Shakespeare and Beethoven said it all better than any of us ever will

An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.

I have a troubled relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, not just because he kicked me out of a bar but also because it's become clear to me that he was not a good person.