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John Ralston Saul

John Ralston Saul Books

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“(...) his (Adam Smith's) theory of sympathy rejected self-love as the basic motive for behaviour. He also defined virtue as consisting of three elements: propriety, prudence and benevolence. By this he meant propriety or the appropriate control and directing of our affections; prudence or the judicious pursuit of our private interests; and benevolence or the exercise of only those affections that encourage the happiness of others. How poor Adam Smith got stuck with disciples like the market economists and the neo-conservatives is hard to imagine. He is in profound disagreement with their view of society. (V - From Ideology Towards Equilibrium)”

Adam Smith
Book:The Unconscious Civilization
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“Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word disease was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. Which disease? The disease of love.”

RealityDesireDiseaseCombinationGoddessRevealingVenusProtestantismCategorizationMoralizing
Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense
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“Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.”

NeedsUsedExistenceTheoryPoliticianFitCircumstancesOfficeConcernedOfficialsAssuredMaintenancePublic OfficeHappy FamilyPublic Officials
Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense
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“We have more than two options. A critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power. Our problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.”

DoeTwoReasonProblemLyingValuesQualityReturnFunctionAbsolutesTreatmentSuperstitionsBalancedArbitraryPositivelyCritiqueObsessiveTwo Options
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.”

ThinkingMenLittlesSufferingReligiousPleasureMoralBoysWifeMiddlePoliticianActivitySeekingCommunicateCheatingInabilityLittle BoysMandatesMiddle AgedCrusadesInability To Communicate
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“Panic: A highly underrated capacity thanks to which individuals are able to indicate clearly that something is wrong. Given their head, most humans panic with great dignity and imagination. This can be called democratic expression or practical common sense.”

HumansAbleIndividualGivenImaginationCommonExpressionCapacityDignityDemocraticPracticalsCommon SenseThanksPanicUnderrated
Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense
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“The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as "Western civilization," they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.”

PeopleThinkingYearsHumansSeemsRealizingCommunityCivilizationPaidWesternErasDenialCorporationsPhrasesRegulationReignHuman ExperienceArbitraryWestern CivilizationTransnational Corporations
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“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.”

PeopleIfsMindLanguageBunchTerritoryRuinedInsultingEloquentIllustrationDescendantsVikingsMind SetScotsCelts
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.”

MightJobsBeliefPlansDivineTraditionSalvationManagersServantAspireEconomistMedievalUtopianServant Of GodAlterationsScholastics
Book:The Unconscious Civilization
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“Of course, corporations and governments have a right to something for their money. They pay the wages. But they don't have the ethical right to literally purchase the copyright of a citizen's potential contribution to society. In a democracy they should not have the legal right to silence the quasi-totality of the functioning élite in order to satisfy a managerial taste for control and secrecy.”

ShouldGovernmentOrderCoursesPaySilenceDemocracyCitizensTasteCorporationsContributionEthicalWagesSecrecyTotalityCopyrightContribution To Society
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“World class is a phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment events, as well as a wide variety of insecure individuals, to assert that they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.”

WorldWellsUsedIndividualCitiesClassEventsRateEntertainmentWideVarietyPhrasesInsecureWorld ClassSecond Rate
Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense
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“The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair.”

LittlesDifferentRealSocialMovementModelsClaimsTablesFilledRejectionChairsBitternessDeniedCynicismTypicalLinkedConservatismAgitationBanquetsCrumbsReal PowerCourtiers
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“Now listen to the first three aims of the corporatist movement in Germany, Italy and France during the 1920s. These were developed by the people who went on to become part of the Fascist experience: (1) shift power directly to economic and social interest groups; (2) push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies; (3) obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest -- that is, challenge the idea of the public interest. This sounds like the official program of most contemporary Western governments.”

PeopleFirstsIdeasBodyGovernmentThreeSocialSoundInterestChallengesGroupsEconomicMovementAreasProgramAimWesternBoundariesContemporaryFranceOfficialsGermanyInitiativeReservedEntrepreneurialFascistsPublic InterestInterest GroupsCorporatism
Book:The Unconscious Civilization
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