“Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status.”

“It would be more realistic to think of all economic enterprise as a public service. Thought of in this perspective, a private economy is a contradiction in terms. Every economy is a public or social (not socialist) economy.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

“When they talk about legal status, that's code for second-class status.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

“First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

“No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

“Canada was built from its very beginnings on the belief that public leadership in the economy and on social issues would be as effective and cheap as anything done by the private sector.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

“It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“It has become ever clearer that underdevelopment is the end result of a process. Therefore, it must be studied from a historical perspective, that is, in relationship to the development and expansion of the great capitalist countries. The underdevelopment of the poor countries, as an overall social fact, appears in its true light: as the historical by-product of the development of other countries. The dynamics of the capitalist economy lead to the establishment of a center and a periphery, simultaneously generating progress and growing wealth for the few and social imbalances, political tensions, and poverty for the many.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

“But when the socialist and, even more, the syndicalist, began to propose his nostrums as medicine for the capitalist system, there appeared a diseased and corrupted form of socialism which found its neophytes in the oddest quarters.”

John Thomas Flynn (1882–1964) American journalist