Pierre Trudeau Quotes


Freedom can flow from order. That is not to say that freedom always flows from order because you can have a totalitarian order and you can have an undemocratic order from which freedom will not flow, but that surest way to destroy freedom is to have chaos.


Citations

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott. Conversations with Canadians. University of Toronto Press, 1972.

Related Quotes

This is a very important quotation. It explains in great part, why there have been so few internal revolutions in Muslim countries. Al-Ghazi’s interpretation of Islamic Law and Theology concluded that even if the ruler is incompetent, corrupt, or destructive he should be supported and obeyed by all good Muslim citizens. The reason was that anarchy and/or chaos was an evil much worse for the Islamic community. There was one exception in the case of a ruler who was blasphemous or did not follow Islam. Then it was the duty of good Muslims. Since then, the ruler of an Islamic state, first seeks to ingratiated himself with the clergy. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the Royal Family gives enormous sums to all the clerics. They then urge dissidents and would be revolutionaries to accept the Royal Family with its flaws and shortcomings and accept their lack of freedom and human rights. And they tell all that the King and his family are all religious and support Islam. Therefore any revolt would be a tantamount to a sin. The Christian world had a different technique for inhibiting Revolution. Christian rulers claimed the Devine Right of Kings—that God had selected and ordained the king to lead. Regime change was contrary to the word of God. In a sense, the Islamic approach is more intellectually honest and seems to have worked much better than the Christians who have had so many revolutions. Better that is from the rulers point of view. From a democratic, Jeffersonian point of view revolting against an evil ruler was almost a moral obligation, and Al-Ghazali’s principle is all wrong and is keeping the Muslim countries from reaching democracy.


Statement made during his first lecture at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, of which he is considered a founder. George Washington and both houses of congress were in attendance.


At the time, Wallace and many other Southern politicians were leading efforts to undermine the new Civil Rights Laws ending legal segregation. Most Southern police forces had been major vehicles for enforcing segregation and brutally suppressing any protests or demonstrations against segregation. Law enforcement officers had been active in lynchings and murders.


Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
  • Born: October 18, 1919
  • Died: September 28, 2000
  • Nationality: Canadian
  • Profession: Lawyer, Jurist, Academic, Author, Journalist, Politician

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau PC CC CH QC FRSC, also referred to by the initials PET, was a Canadian politician who was the 15th prime minister of Canada and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1968 to 1984, with a brief period instead as Leader of the Opposition between 1979 and 1980. His tenure of 15 years and 164 days makes him Canada's third longest-serving Prime Minister, behind William Lyon Mackenzie King and John A. Macdonald.