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John Ralston Saul
82 quotes
“[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 should and could be squeezed into a china shop.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as the unleashing of ideas and myths in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cleared the way for endless changes in state and social structures, so the subsequent pinning down and splitting up of language into feudal states has now made it impossible for the citizen to participate seriously in society. The inviting humanist irony of the early days has given way to the off-putting rational cynicism and sloganeering of our time.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We talk endlessly of the individual and of individualism, for example, when any sensible glance at major issues indicates that we live in an era of great conformism. Our societies turn upon democratic principles, yet the quasi totality of our leading citizens refuse to take part in that process and, instead, leave the exercise of political power to those for whom they have contempt. Our business leaders hector us in the name of capitalism, when most of them are no more than corporate employees, isolated from personal risk.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither Capitalism nor Socialism can pretend to be an ideology. They are merely methods for dividing ownership and income. What is most peculiar for such theoretically practical methodologies, which are also theoretically opposed to each other, is that neither of them has ever existed, except in a highly tentative form. And even then they are invariably mixed together. Their mutually exclusive vocabularies have more to do with basic similarities than with differences.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[S]hould we attempt to use sensible words to deal with these problems, they will be caught up immediately in the structures of the official arguments which accompany the official modern ideologies — arguments as sterile as the ideologies are irrelevant. Our society contains no method of serious self-criticism for the simple reason that it is now a self-justifying system which generates its own logic.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man who uses power to do evil is in theory judged to have been conscious of his acts and to be as fit for punishment as a perpetrator of premeditated murder. But the technocrat is not trained on that level. He understands events within the logic of the system. The greatest good is the greatest logic or the greatest appearance of efficiency or responsibility for the greatest possible part of the structure.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, more than ever, women are occupying positions of influence. However, in the past they have been the exceptions to the rule and were usually obliged to hold on to their power by deforming themselves into honorary men or into magnified archetypes of the female who manipulated men. It still is not clear that women can successfully become part of the established structures without accepting these deformations.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The pinning on of stars reaches its full cynical significance when sanctified valour and bereaved families are used to lend dignity to wars stupidly fought. The courageous and their families are drawn into a circular trap. The sacrificed soldier was valorous under the orders of a commander who has rewarded his effort. The battle was therefore worth fighting. Courage made it worthwhile. The basic rule of war — that it is fought to be won — has been forgotten.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way. The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for someone to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been a crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites. The New Left, which will eventually succeed it, could easily turn out to be equally crude.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Societies grow into systems. The systems require management and are therefore increasingly wielded, like a tool or a weapon, by those who have power. The rest of the population is still needed to do specific things. But the citizens are not needed to contribute to the form or direction of the society. The more "advanced" the civilization, the more irrelevant the citizen becomes.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he free market may be a good, bad or insufficient idea, but, in any case, it is just a crude commercial code. Now it is regularly equated with or given credit for or even precedence over the freedom of man. But the freedom of man is a moral statement on the human condition, both in the practical and in the humanist sense. To equate it with a school of business is to betray a certain confusion. An unconscious unease.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Modern capitalism] is masterful at producing services people don't need and in large part probably don't want. It is brilliant at convincing people that they do need and want them. But it has difficulty turning itself to the production of those services which people really do need. Not only that, it often spends an enormous amount of time and effort convincing people that those services are either unrealistic, marginal or counterproductive.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The individual has been allowed out of his socially constructed cage. That, at least, is the contemporary myth. What is not clear, however, is what that liberation has to do with the fulfullment of individualism. The lessons of history seem relatively clear. Societies on the rise are simple, unadorned and relatively uncompromising. Those on the decline are given to open-mindedness, self-indulgence and the baroque.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Superficial nonconformism... leaves our rational structures indifferent. Questions of moral action and of physical appearance are increasingly irrelevant; they are categorized either as justified self-expression or conversely as suitable subjects for agitated public debate. In either case they are harmless vents.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Marx were functioning today, he would have been hard put to avoid saying that imaginary sex is the opiate of the people.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is little to envy in the woman's position either. For perhaps the first time in history, she has a general sense of herself as an individual apart from men. This self-confidence gives her drive and makes her want to succeed. As a result she is eager to join the system. She does not have a clear idea of what it will do to her. Her focus is on her own past and on what men did to women — not on the male structure and what it does to men.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conclusion drawn by … most of our élites … is that the population constitutes a deep and dangerous well of ignorance and irrationality; if our civilization is in crisis the fault must lie with the populace which is not rising to the inescapable challenges. And yet civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In helping the arms industry to work with the Pentagon to work with the security agencies to work with the oil industry to work with the environmental agencies and so on, he encourages nationwide stability. If successful he will have indirectly eliminated interference from that rival system — citizen-based democracy — which technically maintains legal control over the constitutional structures of the Republic.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are the raison d'être of the entire system. We are also the employers of those in public office and in the public service. Why should we accept from them a discourse which suggests contempt for us and for the democratic system?”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom: An occupied space which must be reoccupied every day.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Which is ideology? Which not? You shall know them by their assertion of truth, their contempt for considered reflection, and their fear of debate.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An important newspaper baron...explains that the cause of poverty throughout the world is indolence. Ten per cent of Americans would not be on food stamps if they simply worked harder.... If only they had followed his father's advice, they'd have "stuck it to the bastards" and become really rich. This image of hundreds and hundreds of millions of millionaires sticking it to each other, there no longer being any other category of citizen to stick it to, is so all-inclusive that there is no need for others to concern themselves with this word.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e have more than two options... a critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power.... [O]ur problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Panic: A highly underrated capacity thanks to which individuals are able to indicate clearly that something is wrong.... Given their head, most humans panic with great dignity and imagination. This can be called democratic expression or practical common sense.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as "Western civilization," they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[C]ontent [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“United States: .... A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word "disease" was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. "Which disease?" "The disease of love.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On June 22nd, [1633,] in the morning, in the great hall of the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Galileo was found guilty of holding a false doctrine. He went down on his knees and both abjured and condemned his own errors. He swore never to argue such doctrines again. It was thus definitely confirmed that the sun did rotate around the earth...Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Saint Mary Over Minerva. Power over wisdom.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[G]iven 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.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each [ideology], in the oppressive air of conformity which ideologies create, will force public figures to conform or be ruined on the scaffold of ridicule. In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ur élite is primarily and increasingly managerial. A managerial élite manages. A crisis, unfortunately, requires thought. Thought is not a management function.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because the managerial élites are now so large and have such a dominant effect on our educational system, we are actually teaching most people to manage, not to think. Not only do we not reward thought, we punish it as unprofessional.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would remind you...that Socrates was executed not for saying what things were or should be, but for seeking practical indications of where some reasonable approximation of truth might be. He was executed not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.”
John Ralston Saul (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source