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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.

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
Well
Rate
Thereby
World
Second
Phrase
Events
Insecure
Cities
Phrases
Class
Variety
Individual
Individuals
Confirming
Used
Entertainment
Provincial
Wells
Wide
Assert

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Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.
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If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.
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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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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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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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Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.
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McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.
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Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.
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United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
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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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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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