We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.

We are in the extreme centre, the radical middle. That is our position.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

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.

I think the sense of exclusivity that tended to be associated with religions in past times has now disappeared. At least it has disappeared in its political and social manifestations as far as I can see.

In my formative years the people who influenced me most were the Christian existentialists, I mean men like Munier and Kierkegaard and perhaps most of all Nicholas Berdyaev and in my travels I looked for one thing more than anything. I rarely discussed, probably mainly because of language difficulties, metaphysics with the various religious people of other groups I'd meet with. But I'd very much try to see how they were incarnated, how their particular soul was incarnated or took roots into reality.

The best thing you can possibly do for a friend is to be his friend.