Jean Chretien Quotes

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. ~ Jean Chretien

For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it. ~ Lawrence Martin

A leader has to know how the system functions - not just the system of government but the whole social and economic system, including business, the unions, and the universities. ~ Jean Chretien

At one point Trudeau mentioned to me that the National Gallery wanted to buy a masterpiece by the great Italian painter Lotto, and it needed a million dollars from the Treasury Board. "Is that Lotto-Quebec or Lotto-Canada?" I joked, but I got the message, and the National Gallery got the painting. ~ Jean Chretien

Some information has to remain in the privy of the office of the Prime Minister and the ministers for the proper administration of government. ~ Jean Chretien

I don't know what is marijuana. Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand ~ Jean Chretien

President Bush is a friend of mine. He's not a moron at all. ~ Jean Chretien

There will be no silence from Canada. Our friendship has no limit. Generation after generation we have traveled many difficult miles together side by side. ~ Jean Chretien

Pierre Trudeau dreamed of a society that afforded all of its citizens an equal opportunity to succeed in life
whatever their background or beliefs, whether rich or poor, ~ Jean Chretien

You have to look at history as an evolution of society. ~ Jean Chretien

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. ~ Jean Chretien

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. ~ Jean Chretien

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. ~ Jean Chretien

Deficit reduction is not an end in itself. It is the means to an end. Canadians must now decide what kind of country they want to build with the hard-won dividend. ~ Jean Chretien

I learned early that business is business and politics is politics. The proof is how few important businessmen have made good politicians. They may think that they are very smart about everything because they made millions of dollars by digging a hole in the ground and finding oil, but the talent and luck needed to become rich are not the same talent and luck needed to succeed on Parliament Hill. ~ Jean Chretien

To my mind losing is always better than never trying, because you can never tell what may happen. ~ Jean Chretien

I was proud to have been the anti-establishment candidate after more than twenty years in politics, a small town guy fighting for the ordinary Canadian. ~ Jean Chretien

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. ~ Jean Chretien

Politics is a game of friends. ~ Jean Chretien

A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against ~ Jean Chretien

Everybody has the right to speak up in a democracy. We would be in trouble as a society if there wasn't a constant pressure to make reforms and to be just. Sometimes as prime minister, when i was caught up in a really loud demonstration, I used to say to myself that I deserved it because of all the demonstrations I myself had organized as a student against Duplessis. ~ Jean Chretien

Good intentions are not an excuse for maladministration of this magnitude, ~ Jean Chretien

Ten years ago, in the aftermath of the referendum in Quebec, the very existence of Canada was on the line ... I had a responsibility to ensure that Canada never again came close to the precipice, ~ Jean Chretien

I've never believed in seeking perfection at the risk of losing everything. ~ Jean Chretien

I was stricken by news and television pictures coming from the United States this morning. It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. There can be no cause or grievance that could ever justify such unspeakable violence. Indeed, such an attack is an assault not only on the targets but an offense against the freedom and rights of all civilized nations. ~ Jean Chretien

The problem was, I enjoyed Question Period too much and loved the challenge it provided. Far from being a dreaded burden, it had become an exciting part of my life; opposition members attacked me, I fought back, I won or lost or held them to draw, and the next day we did it all over again. ~ Jean Chretien

It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. ~ Jean Chretien

Why buy repeater carbines and nuclear armament - if this is kept at home a child can play with it ~ Jean Chretien

A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven. ~ Jean Chretien

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it. ~ Jean Chretien

The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall, your elbows high, and a smile on your face. It's a survival game played under the glare of lights. ~ Jean Chretien

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. ~ Jean Chretien

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. ~ Jean Chretien

The Western world is ... looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. And Sept. 11 is an occasion for me to realize it even more. ~ Jean Chretien

There is nothing more nervous than a million dollars - it moves very fast, and it doesn't speak any language. ~ Jean Chretien

When you're a mayor and you have a problem you blame the provincial government. If you are provincial government and you have a problem you blame the federal government. We don't blame the Queen any more, so once in a while we might blame the Americans. ~ Jean Chretien

Determination will make you find the path to your goals. It will cause you to educate yourself on what it will take to reach your goals. It will move you to take the path less traveled and it will push to do the work that's required to reach your goal. ~ Jean Charest

Finance is a slave's word. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Men fall from great fortune because of the same shortcomings that led to their rise. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

No 'Good evening, Jean-Claude, how are you doing?' Just down to business. How terribly rude,ma petite .
- Jean-Claude ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I came back to my original wife. I came back to her after I made a few boo-boos in my life. Coming back to her was good for me, good for her and good for the children. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

All that attacks is memory, all I suffer is regret. ~ Jean Hegland

It is smart to eat fish, ~ Jean Carper

I actually like getting up to blue skies. ~ Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt. ~ Jean Rostand

People have seen that I intend to sweep away everything we have been taught to consider - without question - as grace and beauty; but have overlooked my work to substitute a vaster beauty, touching all objects and beings, not excluding the most despised - and because of that, all the more exhilarating ...
I would like people to look at my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values, and, in any case, make no mistake, a work of ardent celebration ...
I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range ... I am struck by the high value, for a man, of a simple permanent fact, like the miserable vista on which the window of his room opens daily, that comes, with the passing of time, to have an important role in his life. I often think that the highest destination at which a work of art can aim is to take on that function in someone's life. ~ Jean Dubuffet

You don't think it makes my breasts look like a tiny butt? ~ Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Men speak from knowledge, women from imagination. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My apologies. I meant no offense." Except that his tone told her he didn't mean a word he'd just spoken. ~ Jean Oram

I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another. ~ Jean Cocteau

Perhaps ... our lot on the earth is to seek and to search. Now and again we find just enough to enable us to carry on. I now doubt that any of us will completely find and be found in this life. ~ Jean Toomer

There are two ways to go to the gas chamber, free and not free. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom. For example, in Europe, we've got freedom, we've got the final cut and that's something which is marvellous. ~ Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. ~ Jean Cocteau

The universe is nothing without the things that live in it, and everything that lives, eats. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

'Masquerade' is the autobiography of Wyclef Jean. A lot of people know me through my work with Carlos Santana or Destiny's Child, winning all those Grammy Awards, but you do not know what is going on inside me. ~ Wyclef Jean

I got quite used to changing that cheque, because you can get used to anything. You think: I'll never do that; and you find yourself doing it. ~ Jean Rhys

It is in great dangers that we see great courage. ~ Jean-Francois Regnard

I wasn't born an actress, you know. Events made me one. ~ Jean Harlow

To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It isn't freedom from. It's freedom to. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

From the driver's side, one of Echo's jean-clad legs dangled.
"I've got a hard-on just looking at her, man," said Isaiah as we strolled up the drive.
"You're ate up," I replied, hoping he meant the car, not Echo. I'd hate to throw down with someone I considered family. ~ Katie McGarry

When I stay in one Place,
I can hardly think at all;
my body had to be on the move to set my mind going.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Woman's bodies continue to be dismembered in advertising. Over and over again just one part of the body is used to sell products, which is one of the most dehumanizing thing you can do to someone. Not only is she a thing, but just one part of that thing is focused on. ~ Jean Kilbourne

I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer. ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

I'm not a movie star. I'm a brand name. Van Damme is like Levi's. I go on vacation, and everywhere I go, people love me for my name, not for my movies. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others
first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother. ~ Jean Baker Miller

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

I felt for my crime a just terror; I looked on my life with hate, and my passion with horror. ~ Jean Racine

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic. ~ Jean Rostand

Take your desires for reality! can be understood as the ultimate slogan of power. ~ Jean Baudrillard

A work of art is only of interest, in my opinion, when it is an immediate and direct projection of what is happening in the depth of a person's being ... It is my belief that only in this Art Brut can we find the natural and normal processes of artistic creation in their pure and elementary state. ~ Jean Dubuffet

In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning. ~ Jean Piaget