Tommy Douglas Quotes

Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world. ~ Tommy Douglas

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

I came to believe that health services ought not to have a price tag on them, and that people should be able to get whatever health services they required irrespective of their individual capacity to pay. ~ Tommy Douglas

He was the only man I ever knew who could get money from the rich and votes from the poor with the promise to protect them from each other. ~ Tommy Douglas

Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold. ~ Tommy Douglas

I'm sure that the standard of public morality we've helped build will force government in Canada to approve complete health insurance. ~ Tommy Douglas

To accept the principal that "all power proceeds from the barrel of a gun" is to accept a society which will be dominated by those with the biggest guns. ~ Tommy Douglas

I don't mind being a symbol but I don't want to become a monument. There are monuments all over the Parliament Buildings and I've seen what the pigeons do to them. ~ Tommy Douglas

I remember burying a girl fourteen years of age who had died with a ruptured appendix ... I buried a good many people that I knew, some of whom I loved. ~ Tommy Douglas

The Bible is like a bull fiddle, you can play almost any tune you want on it. ~ Tommy Douglas

Houdini used to pull rabbits out of a hat, but he never tried to make a living out of selling them when he had pulled them out of the hat ~ Tommy Douglas

We are not anti-American. we do not dislike Americans though we abhor American imperialism in all its manifestations. But then, so do many Americans. Many of them have said that even more forthrightly than we have, and many of them have suffered more than any of us for their plain speaking. ~ Tommy Douglas

We agree with the statement contained in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, written by Pope Leo XIII, that "anything which dominates the life of the community should be owned by the community." That is the basis upon which we believe there should be government ownership of monopolistic enterprises. ~ Tommy Douglas

Canada is like an old cow. The West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can well imagine what it's doing in the Maritimes. ~ Tommy Douglas

I am proud that my daughter believes, as I do, that hungry children should be fed whether they are Black Panthers or White Republicans ~ Tommy Douglas

The Liberals talk about a stable government but we don't know how bad the stable is going to smell. ~ Tommy Douglas

A recession is when your neighbour has to tighten his belt. A depression is when you have to tighten your own belt. And a panic is when you have no belt to tighten and your pants fall down. ~ Tommy Douglas

Courage, my friend, it's not too late to make the world a better place. ~ Tommy Douglas

If ever we needed in this country to adopt a new attitude towards homosexuality, this is the time. Instead of treating it as a crime, and driving it underground, we ought to recognize it for what it is: it's a mental illness, it's a psychiatric condition which ought to be treated sympathetically by psychiatrists and social workers. ~ Tommy Douglas

Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege. ~ Tommy Douglas

It has been said that a country's greatness can be measured by what it does for its unfortunates. By that criterion Canada certainly does not stand in the forefront of the nations of the world although there are signs that we are becoming conscious of our deficiencies and are determined to atone for lost time. ~ Tommy Douglas

You can't have a market without government, because governments create the rules of competition and enforce fairness in the markets, and they build the institutions within which competition takes place. ~ Douglas Massey

Live and learn. At any rate, you live. ~ Douglas Adams

I haven't seen anyone for years," he said, "not anyone. I can hardly remember how to speak. I keep forgetting words. I practise, you see. I practise by talking to ... talking to ... what are those things people think you're mad if you talk to? Like George the Third."
"Kings?" suggested Ford.
"No, no," said Arthur. "The things he used to talk to. We're surrounded by them for Heaven's sake. I've planted hundreds myself. They all died. Trees! I practise by talking to trees. What's that for?"
Ford still had his hand stuck out. Arthur looked at it with incomprehension.
"Shake," prompted Ford. ~ Douglas Adams

Fame is as much about luck as it is about talent, perhaps more. ~ Kirk Douglas

You can have a great script, or a great director and a bad script, and get a great movie. Nothing really guarantees anything. ~ Douglas Booth

There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off. ~ Douglas Coupland

Without the men, ships are nothing but empty shells of metal. It's the men who give the ship life, who turn it from a soulless hulk into a
valiant lady. ~ Douglas Mumphrey

It's not being marketed as a gay show by a gay person. It's just Ellen DeGeneres. ~ Kyan Douglas

At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are?
-Richard ~ Douglas Coupland

I have no life there if you're not in it. You're part of everything good I've ever done, Ryen. Please. ~ Penelope Douglas

There were IBM logos designed for the film, and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens. ~ Douglas Trumbull

Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

There's something deep in the heart of every person that wants
to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that
was changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,
not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians
were only as important as the community they inspired. If I
was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn't be to protect
information, it would be to bring the community together and
inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for. ~ Scott Douglas

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse. ~ Douglas Hurd

Eroticize intelligence. ~ Douglas Coupland

The angry man will defeat Himself in battle As well as in life. ~ Tommy Lee

Care shouldn't start in the emergency room. ~ James Douglas

Ninety-five percent of the trading errors you are likely to make - causing the money to just evaporate before your eyes - will stem from your attitudes about being wrong, losing money, missing out, and leaving money on the table. What I call the four primary trading fears. ~ Mark Douglas

An international power supply is the device which means it doesn't matter what country you're in, or even if you know what country you're in (more of a problem than you might suspect) - you just plug your Mac in and it figures it out for itself. We call this principle Plug and Play. Or at least, Microsoft calls it that because it hasn't got it yet. In the Mac world we've had it for so long we didn't even think of giving it a name. ~ Douglas Adams

I come in peace...Take me to your lizard. ~ Douglas Adams

Tommy moved on. Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet - they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now? ~ Christopher Moore

I saw Styx in sixth grade. I loved Tommy Shaw. I got sneakers like him - he wore these tan Nikes. ~ Louise Post

I would hope I was raised polite and charming. ~ Douglas Booth

Without a shared hermeneutic, authority is meaningless. ~ Douglas Wilson

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies. ~ William O. Douglas

Any art which can be subjected to an analytical process is, by this very fact, removed from the possibility of being art. ~ Douglas Portway

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar. ~ Douglas Adams

Life is maybe like deep-sea fishing. We wake up in the morning, we cast our nets into the water, an, if we are lucky, at day's end we will have netted one
maybe two
small fish. Occasionally we will net a seahorse or sometimes a shark
or a life preserver or an iceberg, or a monster. And in our dreams at night we assess our Catch of the Day
the treasures of this long, slow process of accumulation ... ~ Douglas Coupland

I do so many roles, I can't be typecast. ~ Tommy Davidson

There's a number of companies clearly that we wish we had invested in either at the early or at the moderate stage. ~ Douglas Leone

Be incredibly, ruthlessly selfish with your equity. ~ Douglas Leone

If John had been paying close attention to Lester's face, he would have seen him go white, the way men do when they see a trap swinging shut on them. ~ Douglas Wilson

The very fact that Barack Obama - an African-American - was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph. ~ Douglas Brinkley

The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles. ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War. ~ Douglas Brinkley

Photography seems to fix, but this is an illusion created by our short lives. A photograph is merely a note held for 200 years. ~ Douglas McCulloh