Pierre Trudeau Quotes - Page 3

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

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

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.

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.