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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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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
Destroy
Solutions
Exist
Necessity
Idea
Search
Ideas
Absolutes
Need
Absolute
Needs
Apart
Things
Global

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McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.
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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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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
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Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.
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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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Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
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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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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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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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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.
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Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created
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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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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.
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Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
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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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It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.
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An individual who stands out, or disagrees or takes risks is a danger to such systems and is effortlessly and, unconsciously sidelined.
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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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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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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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