“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.”
Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)
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John Ralston Saul 85
Canadian author and essayist 1947Related quotes

“Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it.”
Source: Justice and Fraternity (1848), p. 312
Context: Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just; in vain would it try to force them to be self-sacrificing.

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and I don’t like it much either.”
Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 32 (p. 153)

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 55

Quoted by Chan Norris, "Orson Welles on Latin America". PM, September 13, 1942, page 17.

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter III, Part V, p. 1032 (Last Page).

XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: If evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any God, for all god is good. If anyone speaks of a "bad mind" he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will make the soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says that evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.

From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi
Elvis and Gladys (1985), Ch. 5 : A Romance, p. 55
Context: What is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive — and has never put in an honest day's work in its life.