I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs.

I want to separate sin from crime. You may have to ask forgiveness for your sins from God, but not from the Minister of Justice. There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state.

I believe that Canada cannot, indeed, that Canada must not survive by force. The country will only remain united - it should only remain united - if its citizens want to live together in one civil society.

Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them.

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've always lived in a democratic society.