A commercial civilization is money-oriented, profit-oriented. Commercial values always tend to wrench a society free of tradition.Economics from education to public service is being reorganized on the self-destructive basis of self-interest.
John Ralston SaulWorld 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.
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 SaulGovernments produced by the most banal of electoral victories, like those produced by the crudest of coups d'รฉtat, will always feel obliged to dress themselves up linguistically in some way.
John Ralston SaulThe 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.
John Ralston Saul