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

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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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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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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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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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If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.
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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.
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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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Bankers - pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.
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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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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.
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United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.
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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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Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
John Ralston Saul
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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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We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.
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Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
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Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created
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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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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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Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.
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