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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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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
Strive
Civilization
Bean
Vision
Beans
Women
Counting
Something
Striving
Men
Reduce
Grown
Silly
More quotes by 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
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
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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People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say.
John Ralston Saul
United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
John Ralston Saul
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.
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 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
Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.
John Ralston Saul
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
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.
John Ralston Saul
Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
John Ralston Saul
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
In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.
John Ralston Saul
Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.
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
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
In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.
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
If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.
John Ralston Saul