John Ralston Saul Quotes

102 Sourced Quotes

Only when God was said to have died did various leaders, professions and sectors risk pushing themselves forward as successors.

John Ralston Saul
Management cannot solve problems. Nor can it stir creativity of any sort. It can only manage what it is given. If asked to do more, it will deform whatever is put into its hands.

John Ralston Saul
The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government.... Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.

John Ralston Saul
Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.

John Ralston Saul
Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship.

John Ralston Saul
After a period in which technocrats attempted to become stars and stars to become politicians, the political void has been occupied by the force of mediocrity, which can easily master enough of the star techniques to produce inoffensive personalities and enough of the rational vocabulary to create the sounds of competence.

John Ralston Saul
Born in elevators and supermarkets, Muzak has spread to restaurants, hotels, airplanes, telephone hold services, and waiting rooms. The public-relations experts believe that human beings fear silence - that is, the absence of constantly imposed direction. It is further believed that if we can be relieved of our fears, we will gain enough self-confidence to buy, eat, vote, fly, or simply go on living.

John Ralston Saul
Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each other's errors... Only a sailor can set them straight.

John Ralston Saul
If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.

John Ralston Saul
Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.

John Ralston Saul
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
There is no need to search for global solutions, apart from an absolute necessity to destroy the idea that such things exist.

John Ralston Saul