Quote

Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.

Pierre Trudeau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Choose
State
Language
Bilingualism
States
Imposition
Languages
Speaking
Six
Citizens

More quotes by Pierre Trudeau

Image
It seems to me it would be pretty awful if Canadians came to choose political leaders not for their political ideas and actions, but because of their adherence or their devotedness to one faith or another.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I think that the history of the past hundred years has shown us that, by and large, the one linguistic group to whom separatism is being preached is not moved by the arguments which are used.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
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
Image
Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
You just cannot cut a country in two any more than you can cut a human being in two. If you do, you do not have two human beings you have a corpse.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I, for one, will be convinced that the Canada we know and love will be gone forever. But, then, Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
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
Image
Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
Power only tires those who don't exercise it.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I know the usual answer of Christ using violence to get the sellers out of the temple, but to me this was impatience rather than violence.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
The most beautiful missionaries I saw were those who talked less about religion but who were very generous in their approach.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I do object to the sensationalism or even the voyeurism of doing things in church or out of church.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I never actually got around to taping conversations with my guests, but there are a lot of things you can learn from a man like Nixon.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I was inclined to judge the validity of a man's faith more by the depth of his roots in reality and brotherhood and love. So I felt more at home, shall we say with some Zoroastrians in the Far East, than I did with some Catholic missionaries.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
The politicians, who once stated that war was too complex to be left to the generals, now act as though peace were too complex to be left to themselves.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
We don't think every man should be free to pass on everything to his descendants.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.
Pierre Trudeau