The quotable Trudeau
Known for his wit and intellect, Trudeau leaves a wealth of words behind
Compiled by Dan Glover

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On the arms race: In a very real sense we are not so much threatened by the ideologies of Communism or of Fascism or even, I would say, so much threatened by atomic bombs and ICBMs, as we are by the very large sectors of the world - two-thirds of the world’s population - that goes to bed hungry every night. - Question and answer session, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont., Nov. 8, 1968.

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Comment: Pierre Trudeau was correct in terms of his initial comments, but wrong in his conclusion. As in the case of war and obscene ideology, poverty is a symptom of a greater problem, the wickedness which lies in the heart of man. The massive redistribution of income that Mr. Trudeau thought to be so essential in solving the world's problems and which Mr. Chretien also believes to be so important, offers an elusive hope. Ironically, in view of Mr. Trudeau's comment, "progressive taxation," a key component of socialist and Liberal income redistribution strategy, was also fundamental to Karl Marx's Communist vision.

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What happens in private... is a matter of relations with your own God and your own internal values. And I think that it is more destructive of a society to force people to live as hypocrites and to respect a morality in which they don’t believe... I think a society can be just as badly maimed by hypocrisy as by these private codes of conduct which don’t overflow. - TV interview in New Zealand, May 14, 1970.

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Comment: Despite being credited as a man of great intelligence, Mr. Trudeau makes two enormous errors in logic in the above statement. Firstly, he presupposes that the absence of a law in the area of "relations" takes us into a value-neutral position. Such a statement is obviously erroneous: can it be anything but either gross ignorance or intential political manipulation? Secondly, he says that the legislation that he wants to eliminate, needs to go because its existence wrongly forces people who violate the law to live as hypocrites. There is an obvious absurdity in this statement when it is carried to its logical conclusion, applied in other areas of law and life. But, furthermore, Mr. Trudeau, by this statement, seems oblivious to the hypocrisy he is exercising by attempting to divorce private "values" from public life.