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" Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society. "
John Ralston Saul
Society
Need
Exercise
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" Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention. "
John Ralston Saul
Pen
Attention
Protection
" What nobody wants to discuss is whether or not the black-and-white argument about trade - you're either a free trader or you're a protectionist - is the right one. It's the old 19th century argument. "
John Ralston Saul
Free
Black-And-White
Argument
" Languages and cultures are disappearing at an enormously fast rate, and many of them are in Canada. These are extreme examples of removal of freedom of expression - to actually lose a language and the ability to express that culture. "
John Ralston Saul
Language
Canada
Culture
" There's two ways of dealing with fears of mortality. One of them is to hide, so every day you wear the same suit and go to the same job... and the other is to reinvent yourself. I think I reinvent myself all the time. The idea that I would have to be one thing for the rest of my life would just be a soul-destroying idea. "
John Ralston Saul
Life
Day
Job
" Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place. "
John Ralston Saul
Events
Political
Place
" Democracy, of course, requires strong demands from the public. "
John Ralston Saul
Public
Strong
Democracy
" The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. "
John Ralston Saul
Comfort
Doubt
Job
" Keynesianism, if you add its flexible, muscular form during the Depression to its more rigid postwar version, lasted forty-five years. Our own Globalization, with its technocratic and technological determinism and market idolatry, had thirty years. And now it, too, is dead. "
John Ralston Saul
Depression
Now
You
" Money is not real. It is a conscious agreement on measuring value. "
John Ralston Saul
Conscious
Agreement
Money
" For about 125 years, give or take, the Canadian government has acted extremely badly - even in a way which should be called evil - breaking treaties, breaking agreements. "
John Ralston Saul
Government
Take
Way
" I don't use the word 'renaissance'. It's flawed because in Latin, it's tied to the rebirth of Christ... It's a word that's tied to a European concept. "
John Ralston Saul
Christ
Renaissance
Tied
" I've been up in the Arctic Circle where they have hockey rinks that don't have any heating. So it's - 40 C outside, it's - 55 inside. Or there's a social centre but no budget for anybody to run any programs. Stuff we wouldn't accept in Winnipeg, but we let it go on and on and on. "
John Ralston Saul
Go
Hockey
Budget
" People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the 'Net' doesn't become the site for technological book burning. "
John Ralston Saul
Book
Believe
Freedom
" If you live in a democracy, it's very tiring to be always surrounded by great and high abstract generalisations which are, in fact, the most banal and naive cliches dug out of second-rate movements of the late 19th century. "
John Ralston Saul
Late
High
You
" Traditionally in capitalism, when you have more cash, you can fund more activity, which produces more jobs and creates more wealth. That's basic economic theory. "
John Ralston Saul
Capitalism
Wealth
You
" Canada is the only country in the West that hasn't given in to the rhetoric of fear. The dominant rhetoric is a line of inclusion. "
John Ralston Saul
Canada
Country
Fear
" The 19th-century pure capitalist model of society was a pyramid, concentrations of enormous wealth in a small group at the top, a not very big middle-class in the middle, and an enormous percentage of the population in the bottom part of the pyramid. "
John Ralston Saul
Pure
Wealth
Top
" Either God is alive, in which case he'll deal with us as he sees fit. Or he is dead, in which case he was never alive, it being unlikely that he died of old age. "
John Ralston Saul
Alive
Old Age
Never
" Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen. "
John Ralston Saul
Key
Balance
Citizen
" Dictionary - opinion expressed as truth in alphabetical order. "
John Ralston Saul
Dictionary
Opinion
Order
" Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death. "
John Ralston Saul
Death
Statement
Nothing
" In my mind, there's not a great difference between what people call fiction and non-fiction. So in that sense, I'm like an early-18th-century person. I actually believe there's one way of writing. "
John Ralston Saul
Great
Believe
Mind
" If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state. "
John Ralston Saul
Will
Capitalism
Free
" One of the things non-aboriginal Canadians learned from aboriginal people over the last 400 years is you don't have to be one thing. That's a European idea. There's multiple personalities, multiple loyalties. You can be a Winnipegger, a Manitoban, a Westerner. "
John Ralston Saul
Last
You
Years
" A Big Mac - the communion wafer of consumption. "
John Ralston Saul
Mac
Big
Consumption
" The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over thirty years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic, and global theories, stretched to seventy years in Russia and forty-five years in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force. "
John Ralston Saul
Communism
Wild
Police
" Everyone has an equal right to inequality. "
John Ralston Saul
Right
Equal
Everyone
" Anglo Saxons: To blame for everything. "
John Ralston Saul
Everything
Blame
" In the European tradition, rivers are seen as divisions between peoples. But in the Aboriginal tradition, rivers are seen as the glue, the highway, the linkage between people, not the separation. And that's the history of Canada: our rivers and lakes were our highways. "
John Ralston Saul
History
Tradition
Seen
" Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy. "
John Ralston Saul
Economy
Fighting
Useful