Top 65 Pierre Trudeau Quotes
#1. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#3. If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.
Pierre Trudeau
#4. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#5. Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.
Pierre Trudeau
#6. The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not worshipped; it is our future in which we will find our greatness.
Pierre Trudeau
#7. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#8. I want to separate sin from crime. You may have to ask forgiveness for your sins from God, but not from the Minister of Justice. There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
#9. Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
Pierre Trudeau
#10. Obviously, the state's responsibility should be to legislate rules for a well-ordered society. It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
#11. The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Trudeau
#12. You just cannot cut a country in two any more than you can cut a human being in two. If you do, you do not have two human beings; you have a corpse.
Pierre Trudeau
#13. We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.
Pierre Trudeau
#14. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#15. Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
Pierre Trudeau
#16. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#17. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#18. I just think you Westerners should take over this country if you are so smart.
Pierre Trudeau
#19. When they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer honourable members, they are just nobodies.
Pierre Trudeau
#20. The federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.
Pierre Trudeau
#21. Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen.
Pierre Trudeau
#22. My life is one long curve, full of turning points.
Pierre Trudeau
#23. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#24. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.
Pierre Trudeau
#25. It is wonderful to be despised, if, deep down, we know we are right.
Pierre Trudeau
#26. Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.
Pierre Trudeau
#27. The Canadian community must invest, for the defence and better
appreciation of the French language, as much time, energy, and money as
are required to prevent the country from breaking up
Pierre Trudeau
#28. The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.
Pierre Trudeau
#29. The attainment of of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.
Pierre Trudeau
#30. Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal.
Pierre Trudeau
#33. For my part ... I am a realist but, somehow, optimism always keeps breaking out.
Pierre Trudeau
#34. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#35. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#36. Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.
Pierre Trudeau
#37. The best thing you can possibly do for a friend is to be his friend.
Pierre Trudeau
#38. There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an "all Canadian" boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.
Pierre Trudeau
#39. I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs.
Pierre Trudeau
#40. We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.
Pierre Trudeau
#41. I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable.
Pierre Trudeau
#42. What shall we do about the Abortion Bill?" A: "Pay it!
Pierre Trudeau
#43. I must say that "Give Peace a Chance" has always seemed to me to be sensible advice.
Pierre Trudeau
#45. The politicians, who once stated that war was too complex to be left to the generals, now act as though peace were too complex to be left to themselves.
Pierre Trudeau
#46. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#47. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#48. Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres.
Pierre Trudeau
#49. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#50. Canada is not a country for the cold of heart or the cold of feet.
Pierre Trudeau
#51. Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place - and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.
Pierre Trudeau
#52. The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago.
Pierre Trudeau
#53. In academic life you seek to state absolute truths; in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you.
Pierre Trudeau
#55. We must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy.
Pierre Trudeau
#56. I will use all my strength to bring about a just society to a nation living in a tough world.
Pierre Trudeau
#57. Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet.
Pierre Trudeau
#58. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#59. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#60. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#61. 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.
Pierre Trudeau
#62. There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code.
Pierre Trudeau
#63. I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect.
Pierre Trudeau
#64. Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.
Pierre Trudeau
#65. I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.
Pierre Trudeau
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