Businesspeople From Canada

"Mr. Speaker, as I was saying on November 27, 1979, before I was so rudely interrupted..."

"We will not take this nation by stealth or by surprise. We will win it by work."

"The greatest foreign minister in Canadian history except for Lester Pearson...the person who tried first of all to get rid of the deficit...the credit for the fight in trying to get rid of the deficit belongs to Joe Clark and John Crosbie, and yet they are scorned."

"He's been class all the way, a total team player. We couldn't have asked for more."

"I told my friends: 'They chose the wrong guy.' I thought that Joe Clark would be a far stronger opponent than Brian Mulroney."

"You will know that in our most recent skirmishes, I won some debating points and he won another general election."

"It has been my ironic lot to be seen as both a statesman and a scrapper. The statesman is the more respectable reputation. But the scrapper is what these last four years have required."

"I do more than reflect and respect this country, I fight for it...the question for Canadians is "Can we win?" Yes, we can win except when we are fighting ourselves."

"Evelyn Wrench: What is the biggest thing you have ever done? Beaverbrook: The destruction of the Asquith Government which was brought about by an honest intrigue. If the Asquith Government had gone on, the country would have gone down."

"If Max gets to Heaven he won't last long. He will be chucked out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell...after having secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies in both places, of course."

"The Royal Air Force won the Battle of Britain... It would never have had the chance to do so but for the activities of one man—and that man was Lord Beaverbrook."

"I really do not like what you say about Aitken. He is my most intimate friend. I know him as well as I know anyone and in my belief he is as honourable a man as I am and one of the ablest men I know."

"But to the man who prevented catastrophe on the material plane I have seen no public tribute. I refer, of course, to Lord Beaverbrook, whose dynamic irruption into the field of aircraft production saved what appeared in May, 1940, to be a black situation indeed. We had the organization, we had the men, and we had the spirit which could bring us victory in the air, but we had not the supply of machines necessary to withstand the drain of continuous battle. Lord Beaverbrook gave us those machines, and I do not believe that I exaggerate when I say that no other man in England could have done so."

"The country owes as much to Beaverbrook for the Battle of Britain as it does to me. Without his drive behind me I could not have carried on during the battle."

"I refer to the appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the post of Minister of Aircraft Production. The effect of this appointment can only be described as magical, and thereafter the supply situation improved to such a degree that the heavy aircraft wastage which was later incurred during the "Battle of Britain" ceased to be the primary danger, its place being taken by the difficulty of producing trained fighter pilots in adequate numbers."

"But there are many other people to whom it will be easy to talk. Chief among these is Beaverbrook. He is a magnet to all young men, and I warn you that if you talk to him no good will come of it. Beware of flattery."

"Acts of generosity such as yours are rare and remarkable. When I think of the behaviour of our Liberal friends—men who owe us not only their political reputation but their political salvation and contrast it with what you have done I can only say I am stunned. Bonar Law always said you were the best friend in the world and he was right."

"Peter, do you keep a diary? ... Well, if you had a diary, I would tell you to record in it that this day our country has won a victory that will be recorded in the annals of history in the same terms as Trafalgar or Waterloo are recorded."

"Our policy demands for each of us social equality and equal opportunity... Equal educational facilities, the same opportunities, and a fair start for all together. And the joy of living must not be restricted, limited or confined by any measures whatsoever. The Express is allied to the group of human beings who like to have a good time."

"The Daily Express is the first newspaper to serve every class in the community, rich and poor, high and low, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free."

"Our cock won't fight."

"George Sylvester Viereck: Do you care much for money or for power? Beaverbrook: For neither in itself. I like activity, to wrestle with life and to beat it, to dare and win. I made my first million before I was thirty. Viereck: But having achieved so much, what keeps you going? Why do you spend yourself, your vitality, in politics and in business? Beaverbrook: To escape boredom."

"Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work."

"They are a crowd of little Englanders, anti-Navy and Army fellows, who agitate for universal peace based on the love of God. It is a very devout policy, but unfortunately God is on the side of the big warships."

"I mean if there are going to be missiles that are going off and there are going to be going off over Canadian airspace whether we want it or not, no I don't think that is acceptable. I think that we want to be at the table."

"Put simply, we must always remember that separate but equal is not equal."

"The fact that now we know well that there is proliferation of nuclear weapons and that many of the weapons that Saddam Hussein had, for example, we do not know where they are, so that means the terrorists have access to all that."

"I really think Canada should get over to Iraq as quickly as possible. There's a huge need for front-line medical professionals. There's a huge need for policing. And there's a huge need for infrastructure rebuilding."

"Canada's position was Saddam Hussein should be disarmed. Now, to be quite honest, I had a lot of difficulty understanding how he was going to be disarmed without being replaced."

""I don't think there is any doubt, if there ever was . . . that Saddam Hussein does have weapons of mass destruction. Biological weapons that they discovered were very clear evidence of not only the fact that he had them, but that he had lied and that he is continuing to lie.”"

"I also do not recommend shopping with Cordelia Naismith—but I would watch that reality show."

"Just as people in zombie apocalypses seem never to have seen a zombie apocalypse movie, so people in novels about the pioneering days of time travel never seem to have read novels on the subject."

"Although no credible evidence exists that the speed of light can be exceeded, writers are willing to embrace the possibility that light might be outpaced somehow. Never underestimate the persuasive power of somehow."

"Creating stars in laboratories on the very planets you inhabit turns out to be a bad idea."

"could extrapolate stories, entire worlds, from s."

"It's very difficult to convey how alien and horrifying accounts of how American health care works sound to a Canadian. Seriously, if I didn’t know they were real — if, for example, I didn't know an American reviewer who died because she had to choose between paying her mortgage or having a doctor investigate her incapacitating chest pains — it would seem like something from a particularly silly and Garbageman novel. About the only thing about the US that seems even less believable is the collective enthusiasm for frequent mass murders."

"It's a sad thing that the march of time and evolution of mores can rob one of the ability to laugh at simple domestic abuse."

"Niven made a name for himself as a author, which is to say, someone whose SF provides enough technical detail that the reader can be certain that various mechanisms and events couldn't work the way the author has them working."

", who if I recall correctly is a veteran of the Korean conflict, does mention logistical details more often than I expect in MilSF. Not the fun kind of logistics, involving the production of a million zillion Squamoid Hypermissiles, but the mundane sort, like who gets to dig the latrines. Latrines are not romantic, but nobody wants a battle called off because the men all have dysentery and are too busy shitting blood to fight."

"The point is that there isn't a canonical James Nicoll tale. The point is that whenever a discussion turns to some manner in which a human being can be menaced, injured, or potentially killed, it will turn out that James has already had it happen to him. No matter how funny, unlikely, wierd (sic)), or pedestrian. He hasn't said he has a scar on his arm from being attacked by aliens with laser swords, but I would be only mildly surprised if he did. And I'd believe him."

"Nah, that's just the morphic field of the local environment compensating for a Nicoll Event. Do you recall having a mishap just before any of these sightings?"

"The [item] that was stolen [in the 1975 novel The Whenabouts of Burr] was the physical artifact the American Constitution, which has tremendous historical and symbolic significance, and not the legal and political framework also known as the American Constitution, which is a quaint relic of no relevance to the modern world."

"I like to think the old traditions live on, along with almost all of the children."

"There are no diplomatic efforts that cannot be successfully undermined by a few bigots in the field."

"My father once discovered that one cannot "walk off" gangrene."

"The number of times I have been declared dead is statistically insignificant,although admittedly non-zero."

""Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police" isn't the epitaph I want. I am hoping for "Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away" or "Last body part finally located"."

"I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels."

"Deadly nightshade is the only plant I have ever been able to get to grow for me."

"It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap from the rough vicinity of the ceiling."