Quote

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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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
Rich
Empires
Lying
Zone
Buffer
Idea
North
Undertaking
Doe
Canada
Undertakings
Littles
Resources
Vacuums
Ideas
Exist
Vacuum
Little
Intellectual
Resource
Great
Either
Empire

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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.
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People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say.
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Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
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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.
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Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
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Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.
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United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
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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.
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In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.
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McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.
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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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We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.
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