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A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.

Pierre Trudeau

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Pierre Trudeau
Age: 80 †
Born: 1919
Born: October 18
Died: 2000
Died: September 28
Diarist
Former Prime Minister Of Canada
Journalist
Judge
Lawyer
Memoirist
Politician
Montreal
Quebec
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau
Honor
Defy
Built
Pyramids
Leave
Shared
Values
Basic
Certain
Integrity
Country
Eternity
Every
Build
Something
Standing
Pharaohs

More quotes by Pierre Trudeau

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This is the beauty of the democratic process: it permits that subjective view of justice - which everyone holds - permits that subjective way to express itself peacefully through discussion, through reason and through the voting process.
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We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.
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There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code.
Pierre Trudeau
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I was shaken to the extent that people who criticized me used to say that I was Protestant more than a Catholic because I like to impose constraints on myself, but I don't like them to be imposed from the outside.
Pierre Trudeau
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I'm impatient not with the House of Commons as an institution, but with the way in which it is operated. This doesn't prove I don't believe in participatory democracy.
Pierre Trudeau
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We must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy.
Pierre Trudeau
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What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin it is crimes that it must define.
Pierre Trudeau
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There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an all Canadian boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.
Pierre Trudeau
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In my political philosophy I think that there sometimes is room for violence.
Pierre Trudeau
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The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
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I'm far from believing that we've solved the problem of violence in the 20th century and that's why I'm not discouraged that we still have the Biafras and the Northern Irelands and the East Pakistans and, for that matter, violence in American or Canadian cities.
Pierre Trudeau
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If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throats first.
Pierre Trudeau
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People are more interested in ideas than dress.
Pierre Trudeau
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Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.
Pierre Trudeau
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I do object to the sensationalism or even the voyeurism of doing things in church or out of church.
Pierre Trudeau
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In academic life you seek to state absolute truths in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you.
Pierre Trudeau
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Power only tires those who don't exercise it.
Pierre Trudeau
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I think it's good that you test the reality that surrounds you in your neighbourhood with the reality as it is in other parts of the world you come up with a better judgment. I'm not meaning that literally you can only do that and not go to school at all but in terms of enrichment of a personality I think it's a fabulous thing.
Pierre Trudeau
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The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.
Pierre Trudeau
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I believe military force can be used to redress or change the balance of power in the world, but I think that that's always a losing operation if you're not trying to do it in a way which corresponds to the basic desires of the people on whom you are acting.
Pierre Trudeau