Quote

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

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
Concepts
Canadian
Models
Intolerance
Boys
Ideal
Society
Creates
Girl
Absurd
Hate
Concept
Thing
Model
Emphasizes
Ideals
Uniformity

More quotes by Pierre Trudeau

Image
I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.
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
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
Image
Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
The Canadian community must invest, for the defence and better appreciation of the French language, as much time, energy, and money as are required to prevent the country from breaking up
Pierre Trudeau
Image
People are more interested in ideas than dress.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.
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, 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 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 federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
You know you have a lot of impatience with reality as you see it when you're a young man and full of dynamism and strength and ideals and so on.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.
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
I want to separate sin from crime. You may have to ask forgiveness for your sins from God, but not from the Minister of Justice. There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
My life is one long curve, full of turning points.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place - and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.
Pierre Trudeau
Image
In my political philosophy I think that there sometimes is room for violence.
Pierre Trudeau