John Ralston Saul Quotes - Page 3

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• 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

  Creativity, Hands, Management

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

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

  John Ralston Saul

  Important, Quality, Citizens

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Ideas, Needs, Absolutes

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.137, Simon and Schuster

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• Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.

  John Ralston Saul

  Cheating, Religious, Boys

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.

  John Ralston Saul

  Doubt, Doe, Ridiculous

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.

  John Ralston Saul

  Mcdonalds, Conformity, Passive

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• Content is an obstacle to the exercise of power.

  John Ralston Saul

  Exercise, Obstacles

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul. Chapter "Triumph of the Will", 1994.

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• They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'état, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust laws and the use of child labour to incompetent generalship and inhuman conditions on warships.
  The themes they popularized have gradually turned into the laws which, for all their flaws, have improved the state of man.

  John Ralston Saul

  Children, Men, Voice

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• Love: A term which has no meaning if defined.

  John Ralston Saul

  Term, Defined, Ifs

  John Ralston Saul (2002). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.194, Simon and Schuster

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• Rights are a protection from society. But only by fulfilling their obligations to society can the individual give meaning to that protection.
  (V - From Ideology Towards Equilibrium)

  John Ralston Saul

  Rights, Giving, Protection

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• Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word disease was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. Which disease? The disease of love.

  John Ralston Saul

  Reality, Desire, Disease

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.303, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Powerful, Government, Individuality

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

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• In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.

  John Ralston Saul

  Creativity, Ideas, Interesting

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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

  John Ralston Saul

  Leader, Risk, Pushing

  John Ralston Saul (2005). “The collapse of globalism: and the reinvention of the world”

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• Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.

  John Ralston Saul

  Lying, Ideas, Intellectual

  "Reflections of a Siamese Twin". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1997.

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• Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.

  John Ralston Saul

  Thinking, Guarantees, Predator

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.

  John Ralston Saul

  Opposites, Dogmatism

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.

  John Ralston Saul

  Competition, Anarchy, Metaphor

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

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• If the technocratic class often invokes technology, it is because these inanimate objects can take on a trajectory of their own and so cover for the manager's inability to give leadership.

  John Ralston Saul

  Technology, Class, Giving

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.136, Simon and Schuster

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• Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.

  John Ralston Saul

  War, Fighting, Economy

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

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• The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.

  John Ralston Saul

  Destiny, Political, Intellectual

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• 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

  Reality, Differences, Opinion

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.249, Simon and Schuster

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• Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.

  John Ralston Saul

  Teacher, Teaching, Order

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

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• After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.

  John Ralston Saul

  Illustration, People, Insulting

  "Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1997.

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• In general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest. Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain. Even in Athens, a large part of the 7,000 citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.

  John Ralston Saul

  Giving Up, Sacrifice, Democracy

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