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Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.

John Ralston Saul

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John Ralston Saul
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 19
Author
Columnist
Investment Banker
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Ottawa (Ontario)
John Ralston Saul
John Saul
Needs
Limited
Exercise
Humanity
Society
Freedom
Nature
Exaltation
Part
Humanism
Need
Integral

More quotes by John Ralston Saul

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I have a theory of statistics: if you can double them or halve them and they still work, they are really good statistics.
John Ralston Saul
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The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government. ... Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.
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In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.
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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
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If the technocratic class often invokes technology, it is because these inanimate objects can take on a trajectory of their own and so cover for the manager's inability to give leadership.
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The Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit.
John Ralston Saul
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An individual who stands out, or disagrees or takes risks is a danger to such systems and is effortlessly and, unconsciously sidelined.
John Ralston Saul
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World class is a phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment events, as well as a wide variety of insecure individuals, to assert that they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.
John Ralston Saul
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United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
John Ralston Saul
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Management cannot solve problems. Nor can it stir creativity of any sort. It can only manage what it is given. If asked to do more, it will deform whatever is put into its hands.
John Ralston Saul
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Wordsmiths who serve established power...castrate the public imagination by subjecting language to a complexity which renders it private. Elitism is always their aim.
John Ralston Saul
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Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
John Ralston Saul
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Bankers - pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.
John Ralston Saul
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We have more than two options. A critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power. Our problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.
John Ralston Saul
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Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.
John Ralston Saul
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Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.
John Ralston Saul
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Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.
John Ralston Saul
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People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say.
John Ralston Saul
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The faithful witness, like...Socrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silent...He is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet.
John Ralston Saul
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Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
John Ralston Saul