Pierre Trudeau: Trending quotes (page 2)

Comment in the House of Commons in response to an MP heckling his response in Question Period, House of Commons Debates - Official Report - Second Session - Thirtienth Parliament - Volume V, 1977 - Page 5272 (4 May 1977)

Christ

“I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none — there were just snowflakes.”

Pierre Trudeau

Recounting a "walk in the snow" at a news conference announcing his resignation (29 February 1984)[citation needed]

Home , Heart

“Of course a bilingual state is more expensive than a unilingual one — but it is a richer state.”

Pierre Trudeau

Remark in 1968, quoted in Improving Canada's Democracy (2006) by Terry Julian, p. 14

“Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

Pierre Trudeau

Être votre voisin, c'est comme dormir avec un éléphant; quelque douce et placide que soit la bête, on subit chacun de ses mouvements et de ses grognements.
Addressing the Press Club in Washington, D.C. (25 March 1969) - Audio clip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trudeau_sleeping_with_an_elephant.ogg

Way , Sleep

“I don't really know what a cyclotron is but I am certainly very happy Canada has one!”

Pierre Trudeau

Visiting the TRIUMF cyclotron in (February 1976), as quoted in "A Canadian TRIUMF" http://www.alumni.ubc.ca/grad_gazette/grad_gazette_june_2005.html in Grad Gazzette [University of British Columbia] (June 2005)

Happiness

“I am sometimes also asked whether the October Crisis taught me anything about the art of governing, or about the means that were at my disposal for defusing the crisis. First of all, it taught me that you can be the prescient futurologist in the world, you can lay out the best-made plans and define your priorities with the utmost care, but if you show yourself to be incapable of managing a crisis when it arises, you will lose your right to govern and the whole thing will blow up in your face.”

Pierre Trudeau

Part 2, 1968 - 1974 Power And Responsibility, p. 149-150
Memoirs (1993)

World , Art

“Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen.”

Pierre Trudeau

Part 2, 1968 - 1974 Power And Responsibility, p. 117
Memoirs (1993)

Democracy

“We aimed far and high, but we did not miss the mark.”

Pierre Trudeau

Part 4, 1979 - 1984 "Welcome to the 1980's", p. 340
Memoirs (1993)

“Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.”

Pierre Trudeau

Approaches to Politics (1970)

Intelligence

“Trudeau: Well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it's more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier—
CBC reporter Tim Ralfe [interrupting]: At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?
Trudeau: Well, just watch me.”

Pierre Trudeau

Responses to reporters following the kidnapping by the FLQ of a provincial cabinet minister who was eventually murdered. CBC video archives http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-162-429-21/unforgettable_moments/conflict_war/trudeau_just_watch_me (13 October 1970)

People , Law , Heart

“Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.”

Pierre Trudeau

House of Commons Debate (24 October 1969)

World , Water

“As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.”

Pierre Trudeau

Part 3, 1974 - 1979 Victory And Defeat, p. 190
Memoirs (1993)