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The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

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
Fear
Standing
Made
Value
Widespread
Way
Serious
Participation
System
Void
Vision
Belief
Produced
Society
Rational
Values
Absence

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Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.
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Obviously we don't have 300 million people. We haven't got a big army. We don't have Hollywood. We're a medium small-sized country. We have to do what medium small-sized countries do, which-even though we're not smarter than other people-is to make ourselves seem to be smarter. We have to work harder and know more than other people.
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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
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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.
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The recession is over. This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.
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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.
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United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
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All the lessons of psychiatry, psychology, social work, indeed culture, have taught us over the last hundred years that it is the acceptance of differences, not the search for similarities which enables people to relate to each other in their personal or family lives.
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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.
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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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Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
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It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.
John Ralston Saul
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If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.
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Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.
John Ralston Saul
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Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship.
John Ralston Saul
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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.
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There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.
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.
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There is no need to search for global solutions, apart from an absolute necessity to destroy the idea that such things exist.
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Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.
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