There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.
John Ralston SaulFreud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.
John Ralston SaulElites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.
John Ralston SaulOur 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.
John Ralston Saul