Vincent Massey (1887 – 1967)
Canadian lawyer and diplomat who served as Governor General of Canada, the 18th since Canadian Confederation.
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Technology has been defined, perhaps a little ungenerously, as "a long Greek name for a bag of tools".
We can best serve the cause of Canadian unity and understanding by living first in and through and then beyond our own immediate traditions.
How great a quality is horse sense! Someone has defined it as that something which keeps horses from betting on men!
Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.
We are not born of the passions of war or of the fervours of revolution. And we grew quietly into the realization that, set as we are in a great wide land, with all our differences, there are certain traditions and ideals which we had in common, and which could best be preserved in a distinct society of our own.
It is worthy of notice that many of this generation, fed on text-books, on anthologies and on abstracts, cannot read.
Truth must the guide of those who hold the power; but humility is their sign, the promise that their privileges are in safe hands.
The age which we live in is not suited to idle complacency or to pleasant dreams of past greatness.
The neglect of the humanities in present-day education is doubtless not a cause but a symptom of an age.
I have had what might be called a post graduate course in the most important subject for all Canadians - Canada itself.
History is the necessary food of good and noble sentiments. It ought to give us at once humility and confidence in the face of greatness.
This visit "north of 60" was to complete what might be called at least a preliminary survey. I arrived here and realized that my survey had hardly begun.
The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.
It is the University's function to turn out well-balanced persons with an understanding of themselves and of their place in life.
Rational comprehension of the universe is not enough. We must call to our aid not merely reason, but the vision and the spiritual insight of the ages. These things we must seek.
In opening and conquering a country great and wild and rich - a country indeed not yet fully known or conquered - we have still to learn more about ourselves and each other.
It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?
Old wives' tales are not enough in a day when old wives and old men, too, are constantly moving away from their labours.
In fact, in the far North one sees the northern lights facing south!
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