John Ralston Saul Short Quotes

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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.

John Ralston Saul
Content [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.

John Ralston Saul
Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.

John Ralston Saul
Freedom: An occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.

John Ralston Saul
Money is not real.
It is a conscious agreement on measuring value.

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

John Ralston Saul
Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death.

John Ralston Saul
United States:.... A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.

John Ralston Saul
Bankers: Pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.

John Ralston Saul
Whenever governments adopt a moral tone — as opposed to an ethical one — you know something is wrong.

John Ralston Saul
It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.

John Ralston Saul
The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt.

John Ralston Saul
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
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
If Marx were functioning today, he would have been hard put to avoid saying that imaginary sex is the opiate of the people.

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

John Ralston Saul
Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.

John Ralston Saul
There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.

John Ralston Saul
Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

John Ralston Saul
There is absolutely no reason why we have to deal with the mid-life crisis of our social policies by putting a bullet through their heads.

John Ralston Saul
It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.

John Ralston Saul
In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.

John Ralston Saul
Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within.

John Ralston Saul
Which is ideology? Which not? You shall know them by their assertion of truth, their contempt for considered reflection, and their fear of debate.

John Ralston Saul
Marx was fortunate to have been born eighty years before Walt Disney. Disney also promised a child's paradise and unlike Marx, delivered on his promise.

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
Realism isn't pessimism. And though the anti-reform interests have won an unconscionable number of battles over the last decade, the war is by no means over.

John Ralston Saul
"The recession is over." This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.

John Ralston Saul