John Ralston Saul Quotes
In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.
Quotes to Explore
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I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.
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Maybe now that we have the same sponsor in Remington we can spend some time together outdoors.
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Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not to think about.
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It is my first preference to do films with social significance. Art cinema has given me credibility and status as an actor, but commercial cinema has given me a comfortable living.
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The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
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Raquel Welch is someone I can also live without. We've got some love scenes together and I am dreading them!
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I wish I sang better.
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I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse.
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I've been in the room or watched artists walk in who don't write, and you can't figure out what they really want.
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I'm not at all a hero. I'm a wussy.
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We always saw ourselves in careers as entrepreneurs or angels.
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But acting just sort of happened and I found that I loved it. It was such a challenge.
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In a competitive industry, only paranoid incumbents - those constantly striving for betterment - have any hope of surviving.
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Women often come up not knowing how to make decisions. We get wishy-washy. We become great wage earners - breadwinners - but we don't know how to control empires.
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It's like the brooding hen sitting over a china egg.
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We are all totally committed as elite athletes. To think that pushing people around and bullying them is the best way to get results out of them is just ludicrous.
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People know about the Klan and the overt racism, but the killing of one's soul little by little, day after day, is a lot worse than someone coming in your house and lynching you.
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The soldier who gropes for glory must submit himself to discipline. Subordination gives strength and security to an army. He that will not submit to it when corrected and improved by the experience of ages does not deserve the proud appellation of a soldier.
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A bad system will beat a good person every time.
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In marriage, you sacrifice the adrenaline rush of seeing someone new for the comfort of being with someone who knows everything about you and loves you anyway.
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One of the many things I do not understand about Americans is this: what is it like to be a citizen of a superpower, to maintain democratically the means of planetary extinction. I wonder how this contributes to the dreamlife of America, a dreamlife that is so deep and troubled.
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I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?
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The name America has definitely grown on me. I wish there was a big patriotic story behind it, but the truth is that my grandfather was a librarian who knew all sorts of random facts.
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In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.
