His masterful authorship of the first English Dictionary, impeccable essays on poets, society and politics, apercus of human nature, and epigrammatic prose embarrass the learning and culture of contemporary leaders and students.
Civilization is a race between education and calamity. As Dr. Johnson pontificated, there is the same difference between the learned and unlearned as between the living and the dead. The gifted, enlightened, and industrious are bound by duty and destiny to rescue civilization and culture from their plunging descents into degeneracy.
Fortifying inspiration was forthcoming from Johnson's spiritual companions in panoramic breadth and oceanic depth:
Homer, Socrates, Thucydides, Plutarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Alexander Pope, Adam Smith, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Winston Churchill, Thomas Babbington Macauley, Edward Gibbon, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, and Leo Tolstoy.
Whether we provide for action or conversation... the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquiantance with the history of mankind...— Samuel Johnson