Canada
Topics
Canada
Quotations
By Canadians
- I am proud to be the first member of the Canadian Royal Family to be greeted in Canada's newest Territory.
- Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Canada speaking in Iqaluit, Nunavut, from the Throne of the Territorial Legislature, 2002.
- I dedicate myself anew to the people and the nation I am proud to serve.
- The Canadian Sovereign in 1977, Speech from the Throne, Ottawa.
- As we enter our centennial year we are still a young nation, very much in the formative stages. Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and exellent in the human spirit.
- Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
- Pierre E. Trudeau
- We'll explain the appeal of curling to you if you explain the appeal of the National Rifle Association to us.
- Andy Barrie
- 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.
- Former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas
- Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands.
- I am so excited about Canadians ruling the world.
- Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
- "If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
- "We French & English never lost our civil war/ endure it still/ a bloody civil bore."
- Earle Birney, "Can. Lit."
- "I was doing a gig in L.A. and this woman comes up to me and says, 'Are you really from Canada? Oh my God, I could never live there, it's so ... cold!' I'm like, 'Excuse me, is that your house I just saw slide down the cliff? I'll wear an extra sweater!'"
- "We are an ironic people; irony and some sourness is mixed in our nature. It is a matter of climate. We are a northern people."
- Robertson Davies, on Canadians, in Conversations
- "Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by "old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago", like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds."
- Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks
- "A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, 'What is a Canadian?'"
- "After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them."
- John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin
- "Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire."
- John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin
- "The old cliché about having all your eggs in one basket takes on new meaning with Canada and the United States, because there is something even more wrong about having all your eggs in someone else's basket. It is worse still if that country is much larger than you and worst of all if they don't have all their eggs in your basket. This is not a relationship. It is a dependency. Canada's survival will depend largely on its ability to change that dependency back into a relationship. And one of the key factors in doing that will be the redistribution of our trade. But we can't do that if we have no politicians willing to take the lead."
- John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin
- "Canada is the only country in the world where you can buy a book on federal-provincial relations at an airport."
- "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances."
- Heather Scott, winner of a 1972 contest run by Peter Gzowski
- "Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North."
- Peter Jennings ~ of ABC News fame
- "Canada is a country built against any common, geographic, historic or cultural sense."
- Pierre Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada.
- Canadian nationalism is a subtle, easily misunderstood but powerful reality, expressed in a way that is not to state directed - something like a beer commercial or the death of a significant Canadian figure.
- Paul Kopas
- 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.
- Canada and Mexico, as the saying goes, have one common problem between them.
- J.C.M. Ogelsby
- The die is cast in Canada: there are two ethnic and linguistic groups; each is too strong and too deeply rooted in the past, too firmly bound to a mother culture, to be able to swamp the other. But if the two will collaborate inside of a truly pluralist state, Canada could become a privileged place where the federalist form of government, which is the government of tomorrow's world, will be perfected.
- The huge advantage of Canada is its backwardness.
- We shall be Canadians first, foremost, and always, and our policies will be decided in Canada and not dictated by any other country.
- John G. Diefenbaker
- Whether we live together in confidence and cohesion; with more faith and pride in ourselves and less self-doubt and hesitation; strong in the conviction that the destiny of Canada is to unite, not devide; sharing in cooperation, not in separation or in conflict; respecting our past and welcoming our future.
- Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson
- Canada could have enjoyed:
English government,
French culture,
and American know-how.
Instead it ended up with:
English know-how,
French government,
and American culture. - John Robert Colombo, 1965. Cited in "The Bumper Book of Insults" by Nancy McPhee, Chancellor Press, 1993, p. 108.
By non-Canadians
- "But if we [Americans] are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?"
- Samantha Bennett
- Canada has an experience of governance of which much of the world stands in dire need. It is a world of increasing dissension and conflict in which a significant contribution is the failure of different ethnic, tribal, religious, or social groups to search for, and agree upon, a common space for harmonious co-existence.
- Canada has for many years been a beacon to the rest of the world for its commitment to pluralism and for its support for the multicultural richness and diversity of its peoples
- Canada is today the most successful pluralist society on the face of our globe, without any doubt in my mind.... That is something unique to Canada. It is an amazing global human asset.
- His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, Article: Canada: 'A model for the world' - The Globe and Mail, February 2, 2002
- "I don't even know what street Canada is on."
- "If aliens invaded Quebec, the U.S. press would give it two inches in the entertainment section."
- Sparrow, in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For
- "In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect."
- Bill Clinton ~ President of the United States 1993-2001
- "Geography has made us (America and Canada) neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder."
- John F. Kennedy, address to the Canadian Parliament, (May 17, 1961)
- "It'll be nice when it's done."
- I want to thank all the Canadians who came out today to wave to me - with all five fingers!
- George W. Bush (during his first visit to Ottawa Nov. 30, 2004)
- As always, Canada will now bury its war dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does. It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.
- Kevin Myers (The Daily Telegraph, London)
- Canada is the linchpin of the English-speaking world.
- Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party. "Keep it down, eh?"
- God bless America. But God, please help Canada.
- I've been to Canada, and I've always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days.
- I love this country (Canada). We could not have a better friend and ally"
- Quelques arpents de neige.
- French: A few acres of snow.