What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.

Obviously I prefer freedom, but I know, and I think all history has told us, that freedom cannot flow from anarchy and disorder.

Power only tires those who don't exercise it.

You just cannot cut a country in two any more than you can cut a human being in two. If you do, you do not have two human beings; you have a corpse.

I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.

There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code.

I think that the only ultimate guide we have is our conscience, and if the law of the land goes against our conscience I think we should disobey the law.