Jean Chretien Quotes

Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.

You have the opportunity to make a tremendous impact on the lives of the people with whom you work and live. Make the most of it.

What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter. And that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people's lives.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

If life only has the meaning you bring to it, we have the opportunity to bring rich meaning to our lives by the service we do for others.

I have a very clear picture of what I want to do and what I feel is important as far as my contribution or my appreciation and respect for this life that we're living, and to try to make it better. I can't feel that I'm making it better playing commercial music, and I never could, and I never will.

I feel I was very fortunate to be in the position to do something positive, to make a contribution to change. It gave me terrific satisfaction.

I want to be able to enjoy my life to the fullest so I can add something to the lives of people around me.

Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. ... Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it.

Hee a beast doth die, that hath done no good to his country.

I was raised to give back. I was born to immigrant parents and was fortunate to become successful at an early age. I've always felt a strong sense of national service to my country, and I may have been able to provide leadership in the political arena. I don't regret the decision not to enter politics, I just wonder sometimes if I could have changed anything.

I'm not new to the political process; I was making a contribution as the speaker of the third largest and most diverse state in the country well before I even got into the Senate.

I've always wanted to serve my country in some capacity. But many years ago, my father said he wanted me to run the brewery and he'd do politics.

Money is not the sole or most powerful motivation for many people. A higher and tougher test is to look back and see how you've made the world a better place.

It is a very heavy responsibility [to be a prime-minister] to make, but someone has to make it for our country and I am thrilled and honoured to have that opportunity and that responsibility.

The goal in life is the same as in basketball: make the effort to do the best you are capable of doing--in marriage, at your job, in the community, for your country. Make the effort to contribute in whatever way you can. You may do it materially or with time, ideas, or work. Making the effort to contribute is what counts. The effort is what counts in everything.

I have been for some time in Retirement, and shall not probably return again to public Life; yet my Anxiety for my Country, in these Times of Danger, makes me sometimes dabble a little in Politicks, and keep up a Correspondence with some Men upon the public Stage.

There's only so often you're going to have an opportunity to contribute at a high level and that you should be grateful whenever one presents itself and not take it lightly.

I want to be mayor, but I don’t need to be mayor. I’m not a career politician.

And in my own life, in my own small way, I've tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. That's why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities. Because I believe that each of us - no matter what our age or background or walk of life - each of us has something to contribute to the life of this nation.

Because I believe in my ... proud citizen of this country should be doing. And that is to try and put in as much as he takes out. I guess it's to the hard knocks of life that I attribute this conclusion.

Making money is no fun. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot more fun.

I view my time in politics as a chapter, not my life.

One of the reasons I came into politics was because I thought I lacked the skills to be a social worker.