Jean Chretien Quotes

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

The fact is that the diversity in this political class serves the same interest as diversity in any arena, which is it stirs the competitive pot.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defense can be made openly. You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant.

Most Canadians don't understand the House of Commons. They turn on their televisions, see us yelling at one another, and dismiss us as a bunch of fools.

I believe that politicians have a public trust to further debates about important issues. I firmly believe that every public debate holds the prospect of enlightenment.

Well honestly, I do stay away from being political, especially about Trump. It's just one of those things.

When it comes to politics, unless it's an issue that's really close to home and you feel strongly about, I just don't think you should really talk about it.

Usually, even when a bill draws extreme opinions, there can be a process of expression and negotiation.

In Westminster, I make sure I maximise my ability to represent my constituents. I can do that in a variety of ways: by asking written questions or questions in the House of Commons, through the scrutiny of bills and by sitting on the environmental audit select committee every week, as well as other committees.

I don't like to really dive too deep into politics.

I'm not a political person. I usually beware of political persons. I know many, but I'm not one of them. I have no political ambitions.

I want to commend the [Federalist] Society for bringing together the best minds from right, left, and center to debate the most pressing legal issues of the day.

If there are political programs on TV, yet it takes an artist to actually energize political debate, that tells you something really quite frightening about the level of the political debate happening on mainstream channels - right-wing-biased mothers.

I have never pretended to be a great House of Commons man, but I pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it.

I went back into politics only when it was clear that things weren't going as they should have in my party. I was always arguing, I argued with everyone - with my father, with the leaders I had known since I was a child...and one day, it was in 1955, one of them exclaimed, 'You do nothing but criticize! If you think you can correct things, correct them. Go ahead, why don't you try?' Well, I could never resist a challenge, so I tried.

I've been criticized because I've had the temerity to speak out and done a couple of interviews since I left office. I don't find anything surprising about that. I don't say - I've been careful not to get personal in terms of my criticisms for my comment, but I think the issues are simply too important for the future of the nation for us to operate as though those of us who disagree somehow shouldn't speak out and be heard. I think we need to be heard.

Part of the challenge of the Barack Obama campaign was to try to neutralize that white backlash, and of course, he was masterful in doing that.

every man who takes a part in politics, especially in times when parties run high, must expect to be abused; they must bear it; and their friends must learn to bear it for them.

Hillary Clinton has gotten every foreign policy challenge wrong.

A group called the Texas Tea Party Patriots is hosting a debate next month where Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain will go head to head, while people watching that will go head to pillow.

The essence and foundation of House of Commons debating is formal conversation. The set speech, the harangue addressed to constituents, or to the wider public out of doors, has never succeeded much in our small wisely-built chamber. To do any good you have got to get down to grips with the subject and in human touch with the audience.

[Hillary Clinton] was trying to encourage us to become more active in politics and she said, 'If you leave all the decision-making to others, you might not like what they do, and you will have no one but yourself to blame.' It was such a challenge to the women in the room. And it really hit me: She's talking to me.

The failure of the first Barack Obama administration to really deliver on a new War on Poverty and a new language to explain these societal challenges in some ways provided the fuel that led to the Occupy Movement a few years later. And, while Occupy was a somewhat transitory phenomenon, many of the activist groups that emerged during this period are still out there, and still working on reshaping the political debate around taxes, around welfare, around government assistance to the poor, around debt relief for students, and so on.

I think, in my own state, I can tell you that people do want to hear a serious discussion on serious issues.

The challenge is for us to reinvigorate the relationship with the Chilean people and to give state institutions new legitimacy. But this is also a universal phenomenon. There's also disenchantment with politics in Europe.