Pierre trudeau quotes

Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet.

I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.

Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place - and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.

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.

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.

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.

When the religious principles, like the philosophical, are translated into reality, sometimes the reality forces violence on you, and there is no escape from it, and then I don't think it's something you should try to hide your face from.

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.

I'm far from believing that we've solved the problem of violence in the 20th century and that's why I'm not discouraged that we still have the Biafras and the Northern Irelands and the East Pakistans and, for that matter, violence in American or Canadian cities.

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.

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.

I think that religions must seek peace and love and therefore be pacifist.

I think that more and more young people are discovering that gainful employment isn't the only thing in life. That they can perhaps be just as useful to society and themselves by travelling across the land or around the world, learning more about humanity and going through the various experiences which will make their adulthood more productive.

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.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

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.

Freedom can flow from order. That is not to say that freedom always flows from order because you can have a totalitarian order and you can have an undemocratic order from which freedom will not flow, but that surest way to destroy freedom is to have chaos.

The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.

If you live in a society where those who govern society and determine its path do not respect freedom of speech and freedom of religion, freedom of choice, freedom of assembly, and if there is no democratic process and no way to change the order of things by reason and peace and love and so on, and if, as a result of that, certain ideas in which you believe are being crushed, then I think the only way you can defend yourself against this violence is in using violence of your own.

The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.

Every time I have a political rally I meet some people who say, "I need a job."

I think theoretically if a man is young and healthy society should not give him a basic income. He should not be given dole. He should not be eligible for welfare. If he can work and if there is work available, he should take his choice. If he wants to be a hermit or beggar, that's fine. If he wants to move with the sun and live off the land, that's fine. If he is in a society which has work for him I don't think he should theoretically be eligible for welfare.

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.

The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago.

The best thing you can possibly do for a friend is to be his friend.

I recognize that in some cases it's more important to have freedom and justice than to have peace.

What shall we do about the Abortion Bill?" A: "Pay it!

The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.

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.

Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.

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.

In specific terms I don't think I could make any suggestions, but in general terms I believe that it is because Canadians have been under the good influences of their churches that they are a tolerant people, an understanding and patient people, so that there has been little backlash against the excesses which have happened over the decades in French and in English Canada which might turn either group off.

We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.

In academic life you seek to state absolute truths; in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you.

The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.

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

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.

There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just dont like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go and bleed It is more important to keep law and order in society than to be worried about weak-kneed people Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power.

I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs.

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.

I can see that in certain political situations you have to use force to overthrow police states.

I think violence is counter-productive and it is bad in democratic societies.

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.

We don't think every man should be free to pass on everything to his descendants.

Sometimes you must live in a violent world in order to get greater justice.

I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none - there were just snowflakes.

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 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.

I've always lived in a democratic society.

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.

If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.

The federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.

I just think you Westerners should take over this country if you are so smart.

The die is cast in Canada: there are two ethnic and linguistic groups; each is too strong and too deeply rooted in the past, too firmly bound to a mother culture, to be able to swamp the other. But if the two will collaborate inside of a truly pluralist state, Canada could become a privileged place where the federalist form of government, which is the government of tomorrow's world, will be perfected.

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.

I feel perhaps I didn't deal with the question of violence in depth.

The churches must realize that when they take a position on a political event that they must accept the rules of the game.

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'm sometimes impatient with young people who demonstrate at my meetings and who don't want an argument, but who just want to go on television as having been there and made a fuss. This doesn't mean I don't believe in participatory democracy.

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.

I believe military force can be used to redress or change the balance of power in the world, but I think that that's always a losing operation if you're not trying to do it in a way which corresponds to the basic desires of the people on whom you are acting.

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.

I do object to the sensationalism or even the voyeurism of doing things in church or out of church.

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 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.

Le raison avant la passion - Reason over passion.

I will use all my strength to bring about a just society to a nation living in a tough world.

Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.

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.

In my political philosophy I think that there sometimes is room for violence.

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.

The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.

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 don't believe you can contain ideas by military force.

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.

In my formative years the people who influenced me most were the Christian existentialists, I mean men like Munier and Kierkegaard and perhaps most of all Nicholas Berdyaev and in my travels I looked for one thing more than anything. I rarely discussed, probably mainly because of language difficulties, metaphysics with the various religious people of other groups I'd meet with. But I'd very much try to see how they were incarnated, how their particular soul was incarnated or took roots into reality.

Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.

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 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.

Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power.

Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.

I don't see any easy way of disqualifying people on the basis that they decide not to work.

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.

Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.

I honestly don't know what they mean by a devout Catholic.

I feel very deeply for Canada, and l believe most Canadians do.

It is wonderful to be despised, if, deep down, we know we are right.

Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We're different people from you and we're different people because of you. 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 effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States.

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 would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in unison with their Chief, when they saw the chance to take power.

I believe in God, and I'm a Christian.

I believe in life after death.

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.

As does every young man studying philosophy, I naturally asked myself questions about the truth of all this, and about the meaning of freedom, predestination, and liberty of choice and so on. But to have asked questions of yourself about it, I think is not too important. Let's say - I remain - I remained a believer.

When they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer honourable members, they are just nobodies.

The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk.

People are more interested in ideas than dress.

Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres.

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.

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.

I've been called worse things by better people.

Canadians should realise when they are well off under the Monarchy. For the vast majority of Canadians, being a Monarchy is probably the only form of government acceptable to them. I have always been for parliamentary democracy and I think the institution of Monarchy with the Queen heading it all has served Canada well.

What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries; it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.

My life is one long curve, full of turning points.

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.

Canada is not a country for the cold of heart or the cold of feet.

Power only tires those who don't exercise it.

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.

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.

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.

What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.

I must say that "Give Peace a Chance" has always seemed to me to be sensible advice.

The most beautiful missionaries I saw were those who talked less about religion but who were very generous in their approach.

I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.

lf there is anything that puzzles me in this game lt is that the longer that you are in the job of Prime Minister, the harder you have to work to do your job. With anything else, such as stenography, administering a store, or whatever done it for nine or ten years you get to know the ropes pretty well and it becomes easy and you can spend a lot of time playing golf or something. l feel that the more you know, the more you have to know and the more problems come.

Obviously I prefer freedom, but I know, and I think all history has told us, that freedom cannot flow from anarchy and disorder.

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.

I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable.

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 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.

Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal.

Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen.

This is the beauty of the democratic process: it permits that subjective view of justice - which everyone holds - permits that subjective way to express itself peacefully through discussion, through reason and through the voting process.