I'm sure in a few years it will be unthinkable to say there were 20 years when we didn't recognize the People's Republic of China. And then we'll have to explain what the political constraints were and why it didn't happen earlier.

Freedom can flow from order. That is not to say that freedom always flows from order because you can have a totalitarian order and you can have an undemocratic order from which freedom will not flow, but that surest way to destroy freedom is to have chaos.

Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres.

If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throats first.

This is the beauty of the democratic process: it permits that subjective view of justice - which everyone holds - permits that subjective way to express itself peacefully through discussion, through reason and through the voting process.

I was shaken to the extent that people who criticized me used to say that I was Protestant more than a Catholic because I like to impose constraints on myself, but I don't like them to be imposed from the outside.

lf there is anything that puzzles me in this game lt is that the longer that you are in the job of Prime Minister, the harder you have to work to do your job. With anything else, such as stenography, administering a store, or whatever done it for nine or ten years you get to know the ropes pretty well and it becomes easy and you can spend a lot of time playing golf or something. l feel that the more you know, the more you have to know and the more problems come.