15 quotes
There is nothing more nervous than a million dollars - it moves very fast, and it doesn't speak any language.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Over the years, I have seen too many politicians ruin their careers because they could not accept defeat graciously.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues?
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Canadian federalism is more than a form of government. It's also a system of values that allows different people in diverse communities to live and work together in harmony for the good of all.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
For all its prestige, its fabulous views, its indoor pool, and its lovely garden, 24 Sussex is more like an old hotel than a modern home.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Vision is not political rhetoric.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Politicians of all stripes are always in danger at looking at every problem from an abstract point of view or being briefed by officials, academics, or economists who know every science but the science of human nature.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Three months later, on September 5, 2001, at a pro-am event preceding the Canadian Open at the Royal Montreal Golf Club, I was invited to play a round with Tiger Woods. Nothing in the game of politics had ever been as nerve-racking as that game of golf.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
The two of us had come a long way together from our humble beginnings and the basement apartment that had been our first home as newlyweds in 1957, when I was still a law student at Laval University in Quebec City.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Our old-fashioned system is better than any new-fangled voting machine. Not only is it guaranteed to work, but there is something I find appealing in putting a mark on a piece of paper for the candidate of your choice, as opposed to pulling a lever as if you were gambling on a slot machine in Las Vegas.
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)