Pierre Trudeau quotes

Pierre Trudeau was a Canadian politician who served as the Prime Minister of Canada for over fifteen years. His charismatic personality and progressive policies left a lasting impact on Canadian society. He is remembered for promoting bilingualism, multiculturalism, and social reforms. Here are 68 of his quotes:

Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.

Pierre Trudeau

Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.

Pierre Trudeau

The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.

Pierre Trudeau

I must say that "Give Peace a Chance" has always seemed to me to be sensible advice.

Pierre Trudeau

People are more interested in ideas than dress.

Pierre Trudeau

Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.

Pierre Trudeau

Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.

Pierre Trudeau

If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another.

Pierre Trudeau

There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

Pierre Trudeau

I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.

Pierre Trudeau

I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs.

Pierre Trudeau

I saw the charter as an expression of my long-held view that the subject of law must be the individual human being; the law must permit the individual to fulfil himself or herself to the utmost.

Pierre Trudeau

What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries; it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.

Pierre Trudeau

I never actually got around to taping conversations with my guests, but there are a lot of things you can learn from a man like Nixon.

Pierre Trudeau

I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none - there were just snowflakes.

Pierre Trudeau

Of course a bilingual state is more expensive than a unilingual one - but it is a richer state.

Pierre Trudeau

I don't really know what a cyclotron is but I am certainly very happy Canada has one!

Pierre Trudeau

Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen.

Pierre Trudeau

Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.

Pierre Trudeau

As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.

Pierre Trudeau

Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal.

Pierre Trudeau

The federal government is the balance wheel of the federal system, and the federal system means using counterweights.

Pierre Trudeau