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Vincent Massey Quotes

Charles Vincent Massey was a Canadian lawyer and diplomat who served as the Governor General of Canada, the 18th since Confederation. Massey was the first Governor General of Canada who was born in Canada.

Massey was born into an influential Toronto family and was educated in Ontario and England, obtaining a degree in law and befriending future prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King while studying at the University of Oxford. He was commissioned into the military in 1917 for the remainder of the First World War and, after a brief stint in the Canadian Cabinet, began his diplomatic career, serving in envoys to the United States and United Kingdom. Upon his return to Canada in 1946, Massey headed a royal commission on the arts between 1949 and 1951, which resulted in the Massey Report and subsequently the establishment of the National Library of Canada and the Canada Council of the Arts, among other grant-giving agencies. In 1952 he was appointed Governor General by King George VI on the recommendation of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, to replace the Viscount Alexander of Tunis as viceroy, and he occupied the post until succeeded by Georges Vanier in 1959.

On September 16, 1925, Massey was sworn into the King's Privy Council for Canada, giving him the accordant style of The Honourable. However, Massey was later, as a former Governor General of Canada, entitled to be styled for life with the superior form of The Right Honourable. He subsequently continued his philanthropic work and founded Massey College at the University of Toronto and the Massey Lectures before he died on December 30, 1967. Wikipedia  

✵ 20. February 1887 – 30. December 1967
Vincent Massey photo
Vincent Massey: 20 quotes0 likes

Famous Vincent Massey Quotes

“We are not born of the passions of war or of the fervours of revolution. And we grew quietly into the realization that, set as we are in a great wide land, with all our differences, there are certain traditions and ideals which we had in common, and which could best be preserved in a distinct society of our own.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Canadian Club of Vancouver, October 14, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“History is the necessary food of good and noble sentiments. It ought to give us at once humility and confidence in the face of greatness.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Women's Canadian Club, Montreal, Quebec, March 26, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“In fact, in the far North one sees the northern lights facing south!”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Annual Dinner of the Canadian Press, Toronto, April 18, 1956
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“I have had what might be called a post graduate course in the most important subject for all Canadians - Canada itself.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, December 18, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“The neglect of the humanities in present-day education is doubtless not a cause but a symptom of an age.”

Vincent Massey

Address at the Centenary Dinner of University College, Toronto, October 16, 1953
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“In opening and conquering a country great and wild and rich - a country indeed not yet fully known or conquered - we have still to learn more about ourselves and each other.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, December 18, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Vincent Massey Quotes about space

“It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?”

Vincent Massey

Address at the Congress of the Association of the Universities of the British Commonwealth, Montreal, September 1, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“It is the University's function to turn out well-balanced persons with an understanding of themselves and of their place in life.”

Vincent Massey

Address on the occasion of the Centenary of Trinity College, Toronto, Ontario, April 17, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“Rational comprehension of the universe is not enough. We must call to our aid not merely reason, but the vision and the spiritual insight of the ages. These things we must seek.”

Vincent Massey

Address at the Convocation of the University of Manitoba, October 28, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Vincent Massey Quotes

“How great a quality is horse sense! Someone has defined it as that something which keeps horses from betting on men!”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Annual Dinner of the Canadian Press, Toronto, April 18, 1956
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“Technology has been defined, perhaps a little ungenerously, as "a long Greek name for a bag of tools."”

Vincent Massey

Address at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, December 6, 1955
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Rotary Club, St. John's, Newfoundland, August 22, 1955
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“We can best serve the cause of Canadian unity and understanding by living first in and through and then beyond our own immediate traditions.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, December 18, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“The age which we live in is not suited to idle complacency or to pleasant dreams of past greatness.”

Vincent Massey

Address at the Convocation of the University of Manitoba, October 28, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.”

Vincent Massey

Address at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, March 7, 1953
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“Truth must the guide of those who hold the power; but humility is their sign, the promise that their privileges are in safe hands.”

Vincent Massey

Address at the Convocation of the University of British Columbia, May 18, 1954
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“We must pass through the barriers of language and race, of geography and religion, of custom and tradition and we must build on a common foundation.”

Vincent Massey

Address at a Citizenship Ceremony, Winnipeg Manitoba, May 20, 1955
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“It is worthy of notice that many of this generation, fed on text-books, on anthologies and on abstracts, cannot read.”

Vincent Massey

Address at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, March 7, 1953
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“Old wives' tales are not enough in a day when old wives and old men, too, are constantly moving away from their labours.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Women's Canadian Club, Montreal, Quebec, March 26, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“This visit "north of 60" was to complete what might be called at least a preliminary survey. I arrived here and realized that my survey had hardly begun.”

Vincent Massey

Address to the Board of Trade, Yellowknife, North West Territories, February 25, 1953
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

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