Quotes by John Ralston Saul

“If you cannot create, then buy a company that can. In particular, the large corporations buy small, personnally owned companies that have made breakthroughs in particular areas. They are buying cre...”

“Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.”

“Now listen to the first three aims of the corporatist movement in Germany, Italy and France during the 1920s. These were developed by the people who went on to become part of the Fascist experience...”

“technologies come and go. Economic structures evolve and change. Society adjusts. But democratic basics persist in spite of the Tofflers, Gingrich and the chorus of corporate voices.(III - From Cor...”

“Our essential difficulty is that we are seeking in a mechanism, which is necessary, qualities it simply does not possess. The market does not lead, balance or encourage democracy. However, properly...”

“the marketplace is capable only of calculating exclusive costs; that is; excluding all possible costs that interfere with profit. Leadership of society requires the calculation of inclusive costs. ...”

“As with our earlier worship of saints and facts, there is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting. The message o...”

“In the West, of course, God has been dead for some time. What remains is religion as social belief, which is at best a moral code and at worst social etiquette.”

“Fashion is merely the lowest form of ideology. To wear or not to wear blue jeans, to holiday or not to holiday in a particular place can contribute to social acceptance or bring upon us the full op...”

“Simplicity is no longer presented as a virtue. The value of complex and difficult language has been preached with such insistence that the public has begun to believe the lack of clarity must be a ...”

“In the Arctic, the Inuit are saying water and land are the same; they're an unbroken unity. In the winter, you travel on the ice because it's the linkage and the easiest way, and in the summer, you...”

“People are always saying it's the end of the Gutenberg era. More to the point, it's a return to an oral era. The Gutenberg galaxy was about the written word. At its best, the digital era is part of...”

“Money is not real. It is a conscious agreement on measuring value.”

“Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.”

“Bankers - pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.”

“People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the 'Net' doesn't become the site for technological boo...”

“Freedom - an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.”

“They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'tat, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust laws and the use of child labour to incompeten...”

“Rights are a protection from society. But only by fulfilling their obligations to society can the individual give meaning to that protection.(V - From Ideology Towards Equilibrium)”

“[T]he ideal of the rugged individual opening up the American West is still applied as an essential truth to ten million citizens living in the small area of New York City, as if ten million bulls s...”