John Ralston Saul Quotes
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A Big Mac - the communion wafer of consumption.
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The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation.
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The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over thirty years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic, and global theories, stretched to seventy years in Russia and forty-five years in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force.
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The strength of representative democracy is its ability to slow down those in power who wish to govern by blank cheque, but also those not in power who wish to yank the state about on the sole basis of their self-interest.
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Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention.
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Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.
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Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.
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It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.
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It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.
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Content is an obstacle to the exercise of power.
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Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.
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Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place.
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Some people don't like the 'comeback' because that suggests they went somewhere, which they didn't. That isn't what I mean. In my mind, people were doing well, and then they went right down, and they made a comeback. It's not that they went anywhere. It's that their fortunes went way down, and then they came back.
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You look around the world in 2013, and you say, 'How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?' One or two. 'How many generals or bankers?' Two or three. 'But how many writers?' 850 or so.
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Our elite is primarily and increasingly managerial. A managerial elite manages. A crisis, unfortunately, requires thought. Thought is not a management function.
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Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
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The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt.
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Only when God was said to have died did various leaders, professions and sectors risk pushing themselves forward as successors.
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Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.
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When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities - how we treat one another when we are not being stupid - what I find is deeply Aboriginal.
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Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
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Given our inability over the past two decades to deal with an unbreakable chain of unemployment, debt, inflation and no real growth, we have drifted farther and farther out into a cold, unfriendly, confusing sea. The new certitude of those in positions of authority - those out of the water - is that the certain answer is to cut away the life preservers.
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'The recession is over.' This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.
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As you would expect when individualism is based only on opportunity, no one asks what happens to those who have neither the financial nor the political clout to exercise their tiny portion of that opportunity.