Best 114 quotes of Pierre Trudeau on MyQuotes

A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.

Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We're different people from you and we're different people because of you. 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 effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States.

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.

As does every young man studying philosophy, I naturally asked myself questions about the truth of all this, and about the meaning of freedom, predestination, and liberty of choice and so on. But to have asked questions of yourself about it, I think is not too important. Let's say - I remain - I remained a believer.

Because I am a deep believer in the civil society, I think we should be prepared to pay the consequences of breaking the law and that is either paying the penalty for it, or leaving the country.

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.

Canada is not a country for the cold of heart or the cold of feet.

Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres.

Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.

Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them.

Canadians should realise when they are well off under the Monarchy. For the vast majority of Canadians, being a Monarchy is probably the only form of government acceptable to them. I have always been for parliamentary democracy and I think the institution of Monarchy with the Queen heading it all has served Canada well.

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

For my part...I am a realist but, somehow, optimism always keeps breaking out.

Freedom can flow from order. That is not to say that freedom always flows from order because you can have a totalitarian order and you can have an undemocratic order from which freedom will not flow, but that surest way to destroy freedom is to have chaos.

Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.

I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.

I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.

I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.

I believe in God, and I'm a Christian.

I believe in life after death.

I believe military force can be used to redress or change the balance of power in the world, but I think that that's always a losing operation if you're not trying to do it in a way which corresponds to the basic desires of the people on whom you are acting.

I believe that Canada cannot, indeed, that Canada must not survive by force. The country will only remain united - it should only remain united - if its citizens want to live together in one civil society.

I can see that in certain political situations you have to use force to overthrow police states.

I don't believe you can contain ideas by military force.

I do object to the sensationalism or even the voyeurism of doing things in church or out of church.

If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.

I feel perhaps I didn't deal with the question of violence in depth.

I feel religion is basically and essentially a communication between a man and his God and I think it is the most personal thing of all and I don't think it concerns too many people.

I feel very deeply for Canada, and l believe most Canadians do.

If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throats first.

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.

If you live in a society where those who govern society and determine its path do not respect freedom of speech and freedom of religion, freedom of choice, freedom of assembly, and if there is no democratic process and no way to change the order of things by reason and peace and love and so on, and if, as a result of that, certain ideas in which you believe are being crushed, then I think the only way you can defend yourself against this violence is in using violence of your own.

I honestly don't know what they mean by a devout Catholic.

I just think you Westerners should take over this country if you are so smart.

I know the usual answer of Christ using violence to get the sellers out of the temple, but to me this was impatience rather than violence.

I'm far from believing that we've solved the problem of violence in the 20th century and that's why I'm not discouraged that we still have the Biafras and the Northern Irelands and the East Pakistans and, for that matter, violence in American or Canadian cities.

I'm impatient not with the House of Commons as an institution, but with the way in which it is operated. This doesn't prove I don't believe in participatory democracy.

I'm sometimes impatient with young people who demonstrate at my meetings and who don't want an argument, but who just want to go on television as having been there and made a fuss. This doesn't mean I don't believe in participatory democracy.

I'm sure in a few years it will be unthinkable to say there were 20 years when we didn't recognize the People's Republic of China. And then we'll have to explain what the political constraints were and why it didn't happen earlier.

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

In academic life you seek to state absolute truths; in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you.

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.

In my formative years the people who influenced me most were the Christian existentialists, I mean men like Munier and Kierkegaard and perhaps most of all Nicholas Berdyaev and in my travels I looked for one thing more than anything. I rarely discussed, probably mainly because of language difficulties, metaphysics with the various religious people of other groups I'd meet with. But I'd very much try to see how they were incarnated, how their particular soul was incarnated or took roots into reality.

In my political philosophy I think that there sometimes is room for violence.

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.

In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.

In specific terms I don't think I could make any suggestions, but in general terms I believe that it is because Canadians have been under the good influences of their churches that they are a tolerant people, an understanding and patient people, so that there has been little backlash against the excesses which have happened over the decades in French and in English Canada which might turn either group off.

I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable.

I saw the charter as an expression of my long-held view that the subject of law must be the individual human being; the law must permit the individual to fulfil himself or herself to the utmost.

I think all of us, politicians and churchmen, should do our utmost to change the society so that there would be no need for violence.