Jean Chrétien Quotes

The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall, your elbows high, and a smile on your face. It's a survival game played under the glare of lights.

I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister.

Our old-fashioned system is better than any new-fangled voting machine. Not only is it guaranteed to work, but there is something I find appealing in putting a mark on a piece of paper for the candidate of your choice, as opposed to pulling a lever as if you were gambling on a slot machine in Las Vegas.

A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against

I never bought into the Laffer curve, a theory, named after an American supply-side economist who had been an adviser to the Reagan administration, that essentially argues that a government will increase its revenue by reducing its taxes. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. What politician doesn't want to reduce taxes in order to win votes? Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality.

Once when I was Prime Minister, I came back from an international conference, and I set foot in Canada... To me, there, I said: Chrétien, you've got the easiest job of all these guys there, from all round the globe. Original: Quand j'étais premier ministre, pis je revenais d'une conférence internationale, pis je mettais le pied au Canada ... À moi, là, je dis : Chrétien, tu as la job la plus facile de tous ces gars-là alentour du globe.

Politics is a game of friends.

I was proud to have been the anti-establishment candidate after more than twenty years in politics, a small town guy fighting for the ordinary Canadian.

It's one thing for a courier service transport letters and documents from one city to another at a cost that only big business can afford; but it's another thing to take a letter from an Indian boy studying at the University of Ottawa to his mother in Old Crow.

Everybody has the right to speak up in a democracy. We would be in trouble as a society if there wasn't a constant pressure to make reforms and to be just. Sometimes as prime minister, when I was caught up in a really loud demonstration, I used to say to myself that I deserved it because of all the demonstrations I myself had organized as a student against Duplessis.

For all its prestige, its fabulous views, its indoor pool, and its lovely garden, 24 Sussex is more like an old hotel than a modern home.

But last night, the Conservative Party reached a new low; they tried to make fun of the way I look. God gave me a physical defect, and I've accepted that since I'm a kid. It's true, that I speak on one side of my mouth. I'm not a Tory, I don't speak on both sides of my mouth.

Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another.

There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.

Les défis qui attendent le Canada, selon Jean Chrétien, Radio-Canada Info (14 January 2025)