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We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.
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
Must
Discover
Questions
Asks
Simple
More quotes by John Ralston Saul
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
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
Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.
John Ralston Saul
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
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
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
McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.
John Ralston Saul
Money is not real. It is a conscious agreement on measuring value.
John Ralston Saul
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
Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
John Ralston Saul
Bankers - pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.
John Ralston Saul
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
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.
John Ralston Saul
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
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
Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.
John Ralston Saul
There is no need to search for global solutions, apart from an absolute necessity to destroy the idea that such things exist.
John Ralston Saul
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
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.
John Ralston Saul
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
