John Ralston Saul Quotes

The reason there IS a Turkey and there ISN'T a Kurdistan is in all of history no Kurd could ever stand by any other Kurd long enough to hold off all the hungry Arabs, Persians, Turks, Brits and other sand carnivores swimming around the Fertile Crescent.

The mind supplies the idea of a nation, but what gives this idea its sentimental force is a community of dreams.

Japan is not a Western democracy. The Japanese have kept their traditions, culture and heritage, but they have joined the community of free nations.

Why on earth do we want closer connection with England? We have little in common with English people except our language. We are fast becoming an entirely different people.

It goes way, way back when we were under Sweden's rule. We always think they are better than us. We played against them so often for so many years. Every country has one opponent they want to beat and for us, it's Sweden.

There are lots of nations in the world or national peoples who don't yet have states. They're inside someone else's state and they want a state of their own.

Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

There is a Canadian culture that is in some ways unique to Canada, but I don't think Canadian culture coincides neatly with borders.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Britain's unique success as an industrialised nation-state prompted strong imitative endeavours not only across Europe, but also in Asia. Now many people, who were once humiliated into a sense of nationality by British rule, loom larger than their former masters.

Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them.

Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

The Serbian people certainly will never be an obstacle for the Montenegrins to have their own country.

We, as Americans, at least - I mean, I love my country - but we're so self-righteous sometimes, in terms of, like, our nationality, our country. But we're people from somewhere else; the true 'Americans' are the original peoples. It's funny, but we're a very territorial species.

I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.

A real danger threatens the unity of the Canadian people and the preservation of its political existence. This danger is the slow but sure penetration of Americanism into all phases of our national, political, and social life.

God is an Englishman

Our country should be all Canadian and all British.

Canada is not another [American] State, and we don't want to be one.

Our people may need … a lesson to cure them of British influence and the mania of British commerce.

A Volk [people] without a state is nothing, a lifelong frivolous phantom like the vagabond gypsies and Jews.

Quebec is the Western world's last colonial nation.

The Czechoslovak conception gives the Slovaks an all-State, more universal consciousness. This conception makes us a 10-million strong nation and not a mere 2-million fraction. How is it possible that there should be Slovaks who do not understand this