Pierre Trudeau (1919 – 2000)
Canadian politician.
I am trying to put Quebec in its place — and the place of Quebec is in Canada.
Pierre Trudeau was too much of a professional politician to be described as a good man, nor, it can be argued despite much publicity to the contrary, was he a particularly clever or even wise one. But he was a great man, perhaps the greatest Canada has produced in this century.
We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.
I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none — there were just snowflakes.
I don't know if the member of Prince Edward-Hastings thinks he's on camera, but he's not.
Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
People are more interested in ideas than dress.
There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
Trudeau: Well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it's more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier—
CBC reporter Tim Ralfe [interrupting]: At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?
Trudeau: Well, just watch me.
Of course a bilingual state is more expensive than a unilingual one — but it is a richer state.
Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago.
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.
The federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.
If you want to see me again, don't bring signs saying "Trudeau is a pig" and don't bring signs that he hustles women, because I won't talk to you. I didn't get into politics to be insulted. And don't throw wheat at me either. If you don't stop that, I'll kick you right in the ass.
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.
Oh, for Christ's sake shut up. Obviously the New Democratic Party is not only misinformed but uninterested in the subject.
I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.
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.