Top 25 Quotes by John Ralston Saul of 85 - Page 4

We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.

We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.

Simple, Asks

Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.

Teacher, Teaching, Order

John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

Of course, corporations and governments have a right to something for their money. They pay the wages. But they don't have the ethical right to literally purchase the copyright of a citizen's potential contribution to society. In a democracy they should not have the legal right to silence the quasi-totality of the functioning élite in order to satisfy a managerial taste for control and secrecy.

John Ralston Saul

Order, Government, Silence

"On Equilibrium". Book by John Ralston Saul, 2001.

Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death.

John Ralston Saul

Exception, Absolutes, Statements

John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

Marx was fortunate to have been born eighty years before Walt Disney. Disney also promised a child's paradise and unlike Marx, delivered on his promise.

John Ralston Saul

Children, Years, Promise

John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

A Big Mac - the communion wafer of consumption.

John Ralston Saul

Culture, Bigs, Macs

John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.

John Ralston Saul

Competition, Anarchy, Metaphor

John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

If the technocratic class often invokes technology, it is because these inanimate objects can take on a trajectory of their own and so cover for the manager's inability to give leadership.

John Ralston Saul

Technology, Class, Giving

John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.136, Simon and Schuster

Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.

John Ralston Saul

War, Fighting, Economy

John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.

John Ralston Saul

Illustration, People, Insulting

"Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1997.