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For my part...I am a realist but, somehow, optimism always keeps breaking out.

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
Realist
Breaking
Optimism
Somehow
Keeps
Part
Always

More quotes by 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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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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The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
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I feel perhaps I didn't deal with the question of violence in depth.
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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.
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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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My life is one long curve, full of turning points.
Pierre Trudeau
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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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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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The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.
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Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
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 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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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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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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I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.
Pierre Trudeau
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In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.
Pierre Trudeau
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We don't think every man should be free to pass on everything to his descendants.
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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If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.
Pierre Trudeau