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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

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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
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State
Language
Bilingualism
States
Imposition
Languages
Speaking
Six
Citizens

More quotes by Pierre Trudeau

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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, 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.
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As against the invisible hand of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.
Pierre Trudeau
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I believe that Canada cannot, indeed, that Canada must not survive by force. The country will only remain united - it should only remain united - if its citizens want to live together in one civil society.
Pierre Trudeau
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The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.
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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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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The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.
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For my part...I am a realist but, somehow, optimism always keeps breaking out.
Pierre Trudeau
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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
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The most beautiful missionaries I saw were those who talked less about religion but who were very generous in their approach.
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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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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I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.
Pierre Trudeau
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Obviously, the state's responsibility should be to legislate rules for a well-ordered society. It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
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Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place - and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.
Pierre Trudeau
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People are more interested in ideas than dress.
Pierre Trudeau
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My life is one long curve, full of turning points.
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