Samuel Johnson Quotes
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Charles Dilly, 1791.
This is one of the earliest observations of the fact that after drinking alcohol, a person is apt to speak without his usual inhibitions and judgment. This has been the downfall of many politicians and is the largest problem of maintaining secrecy and confidentiality.
The distinction between recreational drinking and heavy drinking is a subtle one and rarely made until modern times. Most leaders who would not have heavy drinkers in positions of responsibility were usually themselves teetotalers and they were very rare. Heavy drinkers and alcoholics have been in positions of responsibility throughout history including modern times—eg House Ways & Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Peter was unusual in that he made the distinction.
Unfortunately, drinking has been the scourge of Russia over the years. With one of the highest alcoholism rates in the world, Russia’s average lifespan has always been shortened by alcohol.
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".
