Pierre Trudeau Quotes

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

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.

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. I worked to put this view of social justice into effect throughout my years in office.

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.

Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers. I didn't like to slap backs or other parts of the anatomy. I liked hecklers, because they brought my speeches alive. I liked supporters, because they looked happy. And I really enjoyed mingling with people, if there wasn't too much of it.

I am sometimes also asked whether the October Crisis taught me anything about the art of governing, or about the means that were at my disposal for defusing the crisis. First of all, it taught me that you can be the prescient futurologist in the world, you can lay out the best-made plans and define your priorities with the utmost care, but if you show yourself to be incapable of managing a crisis when it arises, you will lose your right to govern and the whole thing will blow up in your face.

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

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

When I had been appointed to the Cabinet in 1967, I had been struck by the amateurism that reigned in the upper echelons of the federal government.

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.

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.

Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.

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.

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

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.