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McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.
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
Mcdonald
Symbol
Conformity
Passive
Symbols
Ultimate
More quotes by John Ralston Saul
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
An individual who stands out, or disagrees or takes risks is a danger to such systems and is effortlessly and, unconsciously sidelined.
John Ralston Saul
Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
John Ralston Saul
Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
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
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
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
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
Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.
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
Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
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
People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say.
John Ralston Saul
Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.
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
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
Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created
John Ralston Saul
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.
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
