Latest Pierre Trudeau Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I think it's good that you test the reality that surrounds you in your neighbourhood with the reality as it is in other parts of the world; you come up with a better judgment. I'm not meaning that literally you can only do that and not go to school at all but in terms of enrichment of a personality I think it's a fabulous thing.

  Pierre Trudeau

  School, Thinking, Reality

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• You know you have a lot of impatience with reality as you see it when you're a young man and full of dynamism and strength and ideals and so on.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Reality, Men, Impatience

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I think that more and more young people are discovering that gainful employment isn't the only thing in life. That they can perhaps be just as useful to society and themselves by travelling across the land or around the world, learning more about humanity and going through the various experiences which will make their adulthood more productive.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Thinking, Land, Things In Life

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I'm sometimes impatient with young people who demonstrate at my meetings and who don't want an argument, but who just want to go on television as having been there and made a fuss. This doesn't mean I don't believe in participatory democracy.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Believe, Mean, People

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I'm impatient not with the House of Commons as an institution, but with the way in which it is operated. This doesn't prove I don't believe in participatory democracy.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Believe, House, Democracy

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• Society is responsible for its social organization, and if it can't provide the wherewithal for men to be gainfully employed then it should pay the penalty and give them welfare.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Men, Organization, Giving

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• Every time I have a political rally I meet some people who say, "I need a job."

  Pierre Trudeau

  Jobs, People, Political

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I don't see any easy way of disqualifying people on the basis that they decide not to work.

  Pierre Trudeau

  People, Way, Easy

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I think theoretically if a man is young and healthy society should not give him a basic income. He should not be given dole. He should not be eligible for welfare. If he can work and if there is work available, he should take his choice. If he wants to be a hermit or beggar, that's fine. If he wants to move with the sun and live off the land, that's fine. If he is in a society which has work for him I don't think he should theoretically be eligible for welfare.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Moving, Men, Thinking

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• We don't think every man should be free to pass on everything to his descendants.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Men, Thinking, Should

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• Freedom can flow from order. That is not to say that freedom always flows from order because you can have a totalitarian order and you can have an undemocratic order from which freedom will not flow, but that surest way to destroy freedom is to have chaos.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Order, Way, Flow

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• Obviously I prefer freedom, but I know, and I think all history has told us, that freedom cannot flow from anarchy and disorder.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Thinking, Anarchy, Flow

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I think that as the guardian of justice elected by the people it's our duty to use whatever forms of force, police, army, to make sure that at least the freedom of choice is preserved.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Army, Thinking, People

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• This is the beauty of the democratic process: it permits that subjective view of justice - which everyone holds - permits that subjective way to express itself peacefully through discussion, through reason and through the voting process.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Views, Justice, Voting

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I'm far from believing that we've solved the problem of violence in the 20th century and that's why I'm not discouraged that we still have the Biafras and the Northern Irelands and the East Pakistans and, for that matter, violence in American or Canadian cities.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Believe, Cities, Matter

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I think all of us, politicians and churchmen, should do our utmost to change the society so that there would be no need for violence.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Thinking, Would Be, Needs

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• Sometimes you must live in a violent world in order to get greater justice.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Order, Justice, World

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I recognize that in some cases it's more important to have freedom and justice than to have peace.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Justice, Important, Cases

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Philosophical, Peaceful, Pacifist

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• Who is it that said that 'you have not converted a man because you have silenced him?' This is true of the use of the military on people.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Military, Men, People

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I believe military force can be used to redress or change the balance of power in the world, but I think that that's always a losing operation if you're not trying to do it in a way which corresponds to the basic desires of the people on whom you are acting.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Military, Believe, Thinking

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I don't believe you can contain ideas by military force.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Military, Believe, Ideas

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I think violence is counter-productive and it is bad in democratic societies.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Thinking, Violence, Democratic

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I'm sure in a few years it will be unthinkable to say there were 20 years when we didn't recognize the People's Republic of China. And then we'll have to explain what the political constraints were and why it didn't happen earlier.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Years, People, Political

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

• I've always lived in a democratic society.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Democratic, Democratic Society

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca