politician, lawyer, journalist, judge, diarist, memoirist, jurist, teacher, law professor, writer
🔗 Read on Wikipedia1919 – 2000
What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.
I would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in unison with their Chief, when they saw the chance to take power.
Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.
There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
I'm not leaving! I must stay.
Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place — and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.
Of course a bilingual state is more expensive than a unilingual one — but it is a richer state.
Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.
If you want to see me again, don't bring signs saying "Trudeau is a pig" and don't bring signs that he hustles women, because I won't talk to you. I didn't get into politics to be insulted. And don't throw wheat at me either. If you don't stop that, I'll kick you right in the ass.
Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.
The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
Trudeau: Well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it's more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier— Trudeau: Well, just watch me.
Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an "all Canadian" boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.
Fuck off.
I've been called worse things by better people.
The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago.
I don't really know what a cyclotron is but I am certainly very happy Canada has one!
If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.
Oh, for Christ's sake shut up. Obviously the New Democratic Party is not only misinformed but uninterested in the subject.
I don't know if the member of Prince Edward-Hastings thinks he's on camera, but he's not.
We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.
We must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy."
I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none — there were just snowflakes.
Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.
The essential ingredient of politics is timing.
I, for one, will be convinced that the Canada we know and love will be gone forever. But, then, Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.
I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.
Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal.
People are more interested in ideas than dress.
If I can be permitted to turn around a phrase, I would say that I'm kind of sorry I won't have you to kick around any more.
I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs.
The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk.
Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.
What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries;it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.
What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin; it is crimes that it must define.
When I had been appointed to the Cabinet in 1967, I had been struck by the amateurism that reigned in the upper echelons of the federal government.
Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen.
I must say that "Give Peace a Chance" has always seemed to me to be sensible advice.
Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers. I didn't like to slap backs or other parts of the anatomy. I liked hecklers, because they brought my speeches alive. I liked supporters, because they looked happy. And I really enjoyed mingling with people, if there wasn't too much of it.
The state has an active role to play in ensuring that there is equilibrium between the constituent parts of the economy, the consumers and the producers.
As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.
I never actually got around to taping conversations with my guests, but there are a lot of things you can learn from a man like Nixon.
The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.
I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable.
The federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.
I saw the charter as an expression of my long-held view that the subject of law must be the individual human being; the law must permit the individual to fulfil himself or herself to the utmost.
We aimed far and high, but we did not miss the mark.
A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.
Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet.
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.