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John Ralston Saul Biography

John Ralston Saul

John Ralston Saul, CC OOnt (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian award-winning philosopher, novelist and essayist. He is a long-term champion of freedom of expression and was the International President of PEN International, until October 2015. Saul is the co-founder and co-chair of the non-profit Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national charity promoting the inclusion of new citizens. His life bridges Canada's arts community and its military and government institution.

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John Ralston Saul Quotes

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: (1) shift power directly to economic and social interest groups; (2) push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies; (3) obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest -- that is, challenge the idea of the public interest. This sounds like the official program of most contemporary Western governments.

Government, Ideas, Movement, Obliterate, People

[C]ontent [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.

Exercise, Obstacle, Obstacles, Power

McDonald's is the ultimate symbol of passive conformity.

Conformity, Mcdonalds, Passive, Symbol, Ultimate

There is no need to search for global solutions, apart from an absolute necessity to destroy the idea that such things exist.

Absolute, Absolutes, Apart, Exist, Ideas, Needs

Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship.

Mass, Unschooling, Bottom, Masses, Intended, Improve

In general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest. Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain. Even in Athens, a large part of the 7,000 citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.

Democracy, Gain, Giving Up, Sacrifice, Several

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

Exaltation, Exercise, Humanism, Humanity, Limited

The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values. . . we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

Our Society, Participation, Rational, Standing, Vision, Way

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.

Existence, Guarantees, Jubata, Predator, Thinking

We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.

Simple, Asks, Questions, Discover, Ask

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

Bankers, God, If There Is A God, Pillars, Political, Society

A foreigner is an individual who is considered either comic or sinister. When the victim of a disaster - preferably natural but sometimes political -the foreigner may also be pitied from a distance for a short period of time.

Distance, Individual, May, Natural, Political

Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.

Aspire, Jobs, Might, Salvation, Servant Of God, Tradition

Only when God was said to have died did various leaders, professions and sectors risk pushing themselves forward as successors.

God, Leader, Leaders, Pushing, Risk

Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.

Dissatisfied, Father, Men, Mother, Sigmund, Talk

Not only is the Napoleonic dream stronger today in our imaginations than it has ever been, but one can already feel the slow falling away of moral opprobrium from our memory of Hitler. In another fifty years we may well find ourselves weighed down by a second monstrous dream of pure grandeur to match that of the Emperor. Two men who dared. Two men who were adored. Two men who led with brilliance. Two men who administered fairly and efficiently. Two men who were modest in their own needs but surrounded by lesser beings who profited from their situation and came between the Hero and the people.

Dream, Grandeur, Hero, Memories, Opprobrium, Surrounded

Of course, corporations and governments have a right to something for their money. They pay the wages. But they don't have the ethical right to literally purchase the copyright of a citizen's potential contribution to society. In a democracy they should not have the legal right to silence the quasi-totality of the functioning élite in order to satisfy a managerial taste for control and secrecy.

Ethical, Government, Literally, Order, Purchase, Silence

Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.

Dogmatism, Faith, Opposite, Opposites

If the technocratic class often invokes technology, it is because these inanimate objects can take on a trajectory of their own and so cover for the manager's inability to give leadership.

Class, Giving, Invokes, Objects, Technocratic, Technology

Marx was fortunate to have been born eighty years before Walt Disney. Disney also promised a child's paradise and unlike Marx, delivered on his promise.

Children, Disney, Eighty, Promise, Walt, Years

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