Preston Manning Quotes

Canada is the only country founded on the relentless pursuit of the rodent.

Negative is always more newsworthy than positive.

Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject.

Do not ghettoize society by putting people into legal categories of gender, race, ethnicity, language, or other such characteristics.

Why not learn from the positive aspect of Canadian populism, which is the way to deal with it? Learn from the negative side, but it's more important to learn from the positive side, because it's an enormous amount of energy.

I think on all the debate on immigration, and all of that, the class of person that should be given the benefit of the doubt is the genuine refugee that is just in real desperate strait. Some of them are in the United States illegally because of [human] trafficking. They were caught up in trafficking, and you can argue to what extent it's their fault, to what extent they didn't know what they were getting into.

A revolutionary should neither look or act like one to get ahead in Canada.

Where you find all the worries about immigration, I think the way to handle that is to listen to the person that's got concerns, and then try to move that in a positive direction, as opposed to decrying it and saying, 'Don't even raise that, you can't raise that.'

New Canada must be workable without Quebec, but it must be open and attractive enough to include a New Quebec.

I think the federal Liberals' micro-tinkering is not causing any kind of upsurge in public confidence. The challenge for Conservatives is how to not get caught in the same web. I mean, the public just discounts what political people and parties say.

In Canada, what I find what people are afraid of or worried about is politicians who denigrate the importance of the resource sectors, which are the basis of our trading capacity.

In many respects, my best friends were dogs.

Besides my religious commitment, the greatest single factor that has enabled me to pursue my business and political objectives has been the security and freedom of my home.

There is a whole school of Canadian academics, media personalities, and politicians whose definition of a Canadian is a North American who fears or dislikes the United States.

Remember the referendum on the Charlottetown constitutional accord? The more Canada's political and business elites threatened Canadians that the country would disappear into a black hole if the accord weren't passed, the more Canadians opposed it.

My religious training told me that in times of personal uncertainty one should seek God's direction through personal prayer and study of the Christian scriptures.

Canada has had populist movements in the past, virtually since its inception. I don't think the central Canadian elites have ever understood populism at all, particularly the Western version of it.

Populism is about is alienation in large numbers of people, but aggravated and provoked by a deteriorating economic conditions.

My personal political convictions are rooted in the populist political traditions of western Canada.

There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems – including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity – than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents.

As a result of listening to Aberhart, my father decided to leave the farm in 1927 to study at Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, Aberhart's training school.

There are hundreds of Canadian communities that have given more thought to hiring their rink manager than they have to electing their member of Parliament.

The trouble with "sacrifices as symbolic acts" is that the immediate impact on those for whom the sacrifice is made quickly fades, while the impact on those who actually make the sacrifice can go on and on.

The role of the federal government should be neutral toward culture just as it is toward religion.

During his long political career, my father was always active in communicating the Christian gospel from the evangelical perspective.

The first lesson, for all Canadians, is that the closed door, top down approaches to constitution making do not provide the public input or debate necessary to achieve a constitutional consensus that will be supported by the people.

What's the difference between a politician and a catfish? One is a wide-mouthed, bottom-feeding, slime sucker - and the other is a fish.

In fall 1967, I was given leave of absence by the National Public Affairs Research Foundation to move to Redondo Beach, California, to work on a short-term research contract with TRW.

When political and business leaders tell the public - any public - 'We don't trust you to make the right decision' - they prejudice that electorate against the very proposals they want it to accept and undermine public confidence in themselves.

An optimist in Canada is someone who think things could be worse

My first official consulting job, therefore, was for a scrap metal dealer (he resented the term "junk dealer") in East Edmonton named Benny Sugarman.