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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.

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
Valuable
Quackery
Pessimism
Protection

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If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.
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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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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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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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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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People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say.
John Ralston Saul
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Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created
John Ralston Saul
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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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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
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United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
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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Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
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McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.
John Ralston Saul
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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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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
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Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.
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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We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.
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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Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
John Ralston Saul