Top 60 Pierre Trudeau Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an “all Canadian” boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.”

— Pierre Trudeau

2. “The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not worshipped; it is our future in which we will find our greatness.”

— Pierre Trudeau

3. “Vive la France libre.”

— Pierre Trudeau

4. “Le raison avant la passion – Reason over passion.”

— Pierre Trudeau

5. “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

6. “Luck, that’s when preparation and opportunity meet.”

— Pierre Trudeau

7. “My life is one long curve, full of turning points.”

— Pierre Trudeau

8. “Canada is not a country for the cold of heart or the cold of feet.”

— Pierre Trudeau

9. “I’ve been called worse things by better people.”

— Pierre Trudeau

10. “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.”

— Pierre Trudeau

11. “The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.”

— Pierre Trudeau

12. “We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.”

— Pierre Trudeau

13. “Well, I am trying to put Quebec in its place – and the place of Quebec is in Canada, nowhere else.”

— Pierre Trudeau

14. “I will use all my strength to bring about a just society to a nation living in a tough world.”

— Pierre Trudeau

15. “We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.”

— Pierre Trudeau

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “The attainment of of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.”

— Pierre Trudeau

20. “We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.”

— Pierre Trudeau

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

— Pierre Trudeau

22. “Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal.”

— Pierre Trudeau

23. “Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them.”

— Pierre Trudeau

24. “You just cannot cut a country in two any more than you can cut a human being in two. If you do, you do not have two human beings; you have a corpse.”

— Pierre Trudeau

25. “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”

— Pierre Trudeau

26. “The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago.”

— Pierre Trudeau

27. “We must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy.”

— Pierre Trudeau

28. “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

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

— Pierre Trudeau

30. “In academic life you seek to state absolute truths; in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you.”

— Pierre Trudeau

31. “It is wonderful to be despised, if, deep down, we know we are right.”

— Pierre Trudeau

32. “Power only tires those who don’t exercise it.”

— Pierre Trudeau

33. “The community of man should be treated in the same way you would treat your community of brothers or fellow citizens.”

— Pierre Trudeau

34. “A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.”

— Pierre Trudeau

35. “I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect.”

— Pierre Trudeau

36. “Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.”

— Pierre Trudeau

37. “Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.”

— Pierre Trudeau

38. “The essential ingredient of politics is timing.”

— Pierre Trudeau

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

— Pierre Trudeau

40. “I believe that Canada cannot, indeed, that Canada must not survive by force. The country will only remain united – it should only remain united – if its citizens want to live together in one civil society.”

— Pierre Trudeau

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

— Pierre Trudeau

42. “I want to separate sin from crime. You may have to ask forgiveness for your sins from God, but not from the Minister of Justice. There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

— Pierre Trudeau

43. “Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.”

— Pierre Trudeau

44. “I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable.”

— Pierre Trudeau

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

— Pierre Trudeau

46. “Some things I never learned to like. I didn’t like to kiss babies, though I didn’t mind kissing their mothers.”

— Pierre Trudeau

47. “Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres.”

— Pierre Trudeau

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

— Pierre Trudeau

49. “If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I’d make sure that I cut their throats first.”

— Pierre Trudeau

50. “In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.”

— Pierre Trudeau