Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.
I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.
The federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.
The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.
In academic life you seek to state absolute truths; in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you.
Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
The churches must realize that when they take a position on a political event that they must accept the rules of the game.
The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
The most beautiful missionaries I saw were those who talked less about religion but who were very generous in their approach.
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.
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.
Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
Obviously I prefer freedom, but I know, and I think all history has told us, that freedom cannot flow from anarchy and disorder.
We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.
I think all of us, politicians and churchmen, should do our utmost to change the society so that there would be no need for violence.
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.
Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.
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.
Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power.
Who is it that said that 'you have not converted a man because you have silenced him?' This is true of the use of the military on people.
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.
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.
We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.
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.
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.
I think that the only ultimate guide we have is our conscience, and if the law of the land goes against our conscience I think we should disobey the law.
The state has an active role to play in ensuring that there is equilibrium between the constituent parts of the economy, the consumers and the producers.
Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them.
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.
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.
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.
Society is responsible for its social organization, and if it can't provide the wherewithal for men to be gainfully employed then it should pay the penalty and give them welfare.
I feel religion is basically and essentially a communication between a man and his God and I think it is the most personal thing of all and I don't think it concerns too many people.
I think that as the guardian of justice elected by the people it's our duty to use whatever forms of force, police, army, to make sure that at least the freedom of choice is preserved.
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.
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
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.
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.
Because I am a deep believer in the civil society, I think we should be prepared to pay the consequences of breaking the law and that is either paying the penalty for it, or leaving the country.
I saw the charter as an expression of my long-held view that the subject of law must be the individual human being; the law must permit the individual to fulfil himself or herself to the utmost.
I think the sense of exclusivity that tended to be associated with religions in past times has now disappeared. At least it has disappeared in its political and social manifestations as far as I can see.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.
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.
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.
I'm sure in a few years it will be unthinkable to say there were 20 years when we didn't recognize the People's Republic of China. And then we'll have to explain what the political constraints were and why it didn't happen earlier.