John Ralston Saul Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.108, Simon and Schuster
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“Everyone has an equal right to inequality.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.2, Simon and Schuster
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“[W]e have more than two options... a critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power.... [O]ur problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
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“Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.94, Simon and Schuster
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“The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.299, Simon and Schuster
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“Not only is the Napoleonic dream stronger today in our imaginations than it has ever been, but one can already feel the slow falling away of moral opprobrium from our memory of Hitler. In another fifty years we may well find ourselves weighed down by a second monstrous dream of pure grandeur to match that of the Emperor. Two men who dared. Two men who were adored. Two men who led with brilliance. Two men who administered fairly and efficiently. Two men who were modest in their own needs but surrounded by lesser beings who profited from their situation and came between the Hero and the people.”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.74, Simon and Schuster
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“Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each other's errors ... Only a sailor can set them straight.”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2012). “Voltaire's Bastards”, p.476, Simon and Schuster
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“Born in elevators and supermarkets, Muzak has spread to restaurants, hotels, airplanes, telephone hold services, and waiting rooms. The public-relations experts believe that human beings fear silence - that is, the absence of constantly imposed direction. It is further believed that if we can be relieved of our fears, we will gain enough self-confidence to buy, eat, vote, fly, or simply go on living.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“A foreigner is an individual who is considered either comic or sinister. When the victim of a disaster - preferably natural but sometimes political -the foreigner may also be pitied from a distance for a short period of time.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
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“Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“After a period in which technocrats attempted to become stars and stars to become politicians, the political void has been occupied by the force of mediocrity, which can easily master enough of the star techniques to produce inoffensive personalities and enough of the rational vocabulary to create the sounds of competence.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“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 -
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“The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government. ... Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
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“Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“We all need a bit of self-delusion. It gets us over the difficult spots.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
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“It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created”
-- John Ralston SaulSource : John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.3, Simon and Schuster
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“Only when God was said to have died did various leaders, professions and sectors risk pushing themselves forward as successors.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“[C]ontent [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
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“The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.”
-- John Ralston Saul -
“Simplicity is no longer presented as a virtue. The value of complex and difficult language has been preached with such insistence that the public has begun to believe the lack of clarity must be a sign of artistic talent.”
-- John Ralston Saul
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