John Ralston Saul Quotes

Realism isn't pessimism. And though the anti-reform interests have won an unconscionable number of battles over the last decade, the war is by no means over.

John Ralston Saul

• War

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I'm too self-serious for a comedy.

  

  Damien Chazelle
  • Comedy
  • Serious
  • Too

• Balance is key in cooking - you want a little acid, a little sweet, a little savory - the flavors should be harmonious.

  

  Gail Simmons
  • Balance
  • Sweet
  • Cooking

• I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

  

  H. G. Bissinger
  • Power
  • Know
  • Sometimes

• Women with minimal access to resources and no access to child care have limited choices that too often mean low-wage and part-time labor. In rural communities in the developing world, when women farmers have unequal access to fertilizers or training, their farm productivity lags behind men.

  

  Lael Brainard
  • Time
  • World
  • Men

• In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option. We need to change this attitude toward failure - and celebrate the idea that only by falling on our collective business faces do we learn enough to succeed down the road.

  

  Naveen Jain
  • World
  • Business
  • Today

• I love the Web, but the basis of my work is going through the physical books. When you go to the library, you see other books around on the shelves that you never knew existed. You can flip through a book and see the whole outline of it.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Work
  • Book
  • Library

• Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

  

  Carl Sandburg
  • Poetry
  • Synthesis
  • Biscuits

• We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Time
  • Great
  • Society

• When I'm in the studio, I'm strictly thinking about the beats, the rhymes and the song. The decision I make once the songs are created, and there's a barcode put on the package, and I'm out there in the street selling it, those decisions as a businessman are different than the creative decisions you make.

  

  Talib Kweli Black Star
  • Different
  • Thinking
  • Song

• As a kid, I dreamed of being a pop star, a glamorous woman and traveling the world. And I've done that all my life.

  

  Samantha Fox
  • Life
  • World
  • Done

• In the midst of the pain and panic of the Great Depression, as many as 2 million people of Mexican descent were expelled from the United States.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • People
  • Great
  • Pain

• Marriage is a social construct, but I still believe in it.

  

  Talulah Riley
  • Believe
  • Marriage
  • Social

• He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.

  

  Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Intelligent
  • Become
  • Far

• If it seems like you're doing work when you're acting, then you're doing something wrong.

  

  Parker Stevenson
  • Work
  • Acting
  • Doing

• I'm a girl from Queens. I've never gone, 'What am I doing today? Oh, I'm gonna grab a gun and learn how to use it.'

  

  Zoe Saldana
  • Today
  • Girl
  • Gun

• I've always had a complicated relationship with sleep. Even as a little kid, I never wanted to go to bed - it always seemed unfair in some way.

  

  K. Flay
  • Relationship
  • Sleep
  • Never

• I feel very much satisfied to play in Baltimore.

  

  Vic Willis
  • Play
  • Feel
  • Satisfied

• A Reagan appointee, Justice Kennedy is no liberal, as he has shown on issues from affirmative action to corporate campaign spending. But he has repeatedly sided with gay litigants before the court.

  

  Adam Cohen
  • Action
  • Justice
  • Gay

• The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

  

  Gaston Bachelard
  • Truth
  • Listening
  • Murmuring

• I ask myself why I do it. Maybe it's to prove I'm still around. It takes a lot out of my body. I'm not an NBA player anymore. At my age, very few people can handle it.

  

  Jerry Stiller
  • People
  • Why
  • Age

• Many of our countrymen came to hate the war we fought. Those who hated it the most—the professionally sensitive—were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who had been ordered to fight it. They hated us as well, and we went to ground in the cross fire, as we had learned in the jungles.

  

  Hal Moore
  • War
  • Soldiers
  • Countrymen

• Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit.

  

  T. E. Lawrence
  • Country
  • Freedom

• I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not and end up going extinct. We'd be the laughingstock of the aliens of the cosmos if that were the case.

  

  Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Up
  • Power
  • Galaxy

• Realism isn't pessimism. And though the anti-reform interests have won an unconscionable number of battles over the last decade, the war is by no means over.

  

  John Ralston Saul
  • War