602+ John a Macdonald Quotes That Defied Convention!

Exploring the wisdom and insight of one of Canada’s founding fathers, this article delves into a collection of John A Macdonald quotes that resonate with timeless relevance.

Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, left behind a legacy of visionary leadership and astute observations.

Through his articulate expressions, we gain profound glimpses into the values and challenges of his era.

Join us on a journey through the words of this influential figure as we uncover the enduring wisdom encapsulated in John A. Macdonald’s quotes, shedding light on the enduring principles that shaped the nation’s history.

John A Macdonald Quotes

John A Macdonald Quotes

“The preservation of the national faith is not only justified, but it is the highest duty of the legislator.”

“A British subject I was born. A British subject I will die.”

“Whatever you may have read or heard, my politics are not of the marketplace.”

“The constitution is a framework of government, and its spirit depends on the nature of the people who control it.”

“It is not the individual only who is moved to be of service to his fellows, but the nation and the larger unit of mankind.”

“Let us be English or let us be French… and above all, let us be Canadians.”

“I am a subject of this free government, which I respect, but I claim to be a British subject by birth.”

“The great remedy for the evils of a want of knowledge is knowledge.”

“If I had influence over the minds of the people of Canada, any power over their intellect, I would leave them this legacy: ‘Whatever you do, adhere to the Union. We are a great country and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.'”

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

“It is not the taking away of property that constitutes robbery, but the unjust taking away.”

“The Chinese must be governed by Chinese laws.”

“Let us be true to ourselves and to those who have trusted us; and trustful of them.”

“It is my intention to remain in politics as long as I live.”

“The prospects of the future depend upon the maintenance of the union.”

“I have no remorses.”

“Anybody may support me when I am right. I want someone who will support me when I am wrong.”

“Experience, the shrewd but slow organ of the people’s will, was at fault in its conclusions.”

“It would be well, I think, if it were made the duty of each returning officer to canvass the whole constituency so that every elector should see the man and hear his policy.”

“No, I am not a drinker. I never use intoxicating liquors except for medicinal purposes.”

“A public man ought as little to be afraid of the people knowing the truth as a private man ought to fear like results from the world knowing his principles.”

“I must confess that in plain unvarnished language, the tendency of the Constitution is to a republican system and the ultimate fall of the monarchy.”

“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs … has been, not whether they were free but whether they were equal.”

“When fortune empties her chamberpot on your head, smile and say, ‘We are going to have a summer shower.'”

Sir John a Macdonald Quotes

Sir John a Macdonald Quotes

“The Senate is the sober second thought of the nation.”

“I have been called a Tory, but I am neither a Tory nor a Grit; I am a Liberal Conservative.”

“I believe the country will be saved or destroyed in the next twelve months.”

“Let us be English, or let us be French, and above all, let us be Canadians.”

“We are all of us from the Atlantic to the Pacific Canadians. Whatever may have been our origin, however much we may differ in race, creed, or color, we are all Canadians.”

“The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothegm of my illustrious predecessor, Sir John Thompson, is true, that in the present state of civilization the best aliment for the human race is the can-opener.”

“It is a policy that has made this country, and is it not fair to say that those who have come in with us as partners, or who have succeeded us, should carry out the policy?”

“The more I consider the subject, the more impressed I am with the absence of any ground for any distinction founded on language, race, or religion.”

“I must say that I find the states of our great neighbor to be a very powerful, a very great, and a very growing nation.”

“We have to remember that the Union is a confederation of sovereign States; that the Federal Government is the creation of those States, and that its powers are limited to the subjects expressly entrusted to it by the Constitution.”

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.”

“If the Leader of the Opposition can point out any remedy which will be effective in preventing combinations of capital, then the government will be glad to consider it.”

“The prosperity of the country depends upon the manufacturing and exporting of its products. The demand for labor should be such that every able-bodied man, woman, and child in the country can find employment.”

“I am no alarmist, but I would not be doing my duty to my country if I did not say that at no distant day, we may have to face the question of whether we are to have control of our own affairs or whether they are to be controlled by others.”

“It is a very melancholy thought to me that we have to educate our statesmen as we educate our poodles; that they must learn a trick before they can be trusted to act in a great emergency.”

“When fortune empties her chamberpot on your head, smile and say, ‘We are going to have a summer shower.'”

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

“Our greatest trouble has been the indifference of the great majority of the people to the needs of the country.”

“It is not the individual only who is moved to be of service to his fellows, but the nation and the larger unit of mankind.”

“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”

“Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.”

“It is not the matter of the fact but the matter of the principle that signifies.”

“Whatever you do, adhere to the Union. We are a great country and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.”

“The idea of a national university is, and has been, an object very near my heart.”

“My sins of omission and commission I do not deny; but I trust that it may be said of me in the ultimate issue that I have remained faithful to my country, faithful to my principles, faithful to my party, and, above all, faithful to the British Empire.”

“I must confess that in plain unvarnished language, the tendency of the Constitution is to a republican system and the ultimate fall of the monarchy.”

John a Macdonald Quotes About Confederation

John a Macdonald Quotes About Confederation

“A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die.”

“The cup of Confederation, which ran over once with happiness for all, has been drained and exhausted and has left nothing but dregs of bitterness and disappointment.”

“I am a subject of this land, a citizen of this country, and I am never ashamed of it.”

“We are all of us, whether we like it or not, members of one another, and the time has arrived when we should recognize this and act accordingly.”

“Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.”

“Let us be English or let us be French… and above all let us be Canadians.”

“Confederation is only yet in the gristle, and it will require five years more before it hardens into bone.”

“We must look outwards to the Empire and seek to promote a good understanding between England and her colonies.”

“Whatever is good for the East is good for the West.”

“I have no remembrance of any period in my public life in which I have enjoyed a greater amount of real, solid happiness than in these last years.”

“I hope that Canada will never become what the United States is as regards its great corporations, combinations of wealth.”

“It is my intention to make Canada independent of Britain and the Empire.”

“The North-West is our last national hope.”

“The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.”

“I have nothing but contempt for the narrow, provincial spirit.”

“We shall never have a truly national legislature until we have a body in which the separate strength of the various provinces is proportionately represented.”

“It would be indeed unfortunate if any of our great provinces were so narrow-minded as to adopt a policy of exclusion.”

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”

“There is but one way of attaining a true British North American spirit, and that is by creating a feeling of national identity.”

“I have never shrunk from doing what I thought was my duty as a public man.”

“Canada is not to be dictated to on the course she is to follow.”

“The farmer is the man who, despite exploitation and expropriation, has fought his way from his original obscurity.”

“No man who has failed in the world is ever asked to tell us the secrets of his success.”

“Let us be English or let us be French, and above all, let us be Canadians.”

“Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world.”

“The Liberal party is a hundred years too soon for their policy, for what they propose is practically Socialism, and that has not yet been tried in the world on a sufficiently large scale to be a success.”

“I think it is right that men should do what is in their power to benefit the country.”

“The people in Canada are just as free as the people in the United States.”

“The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.”

“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad.”

John a Macdonald Famous Quotes

John a Macdonald Famous Quotes

“The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.”

“A British subject I was born. A British subject I will die.”

“Whatever you do, adhere to the Union. We are a great country, and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.”

“It would be wise, wise, judicious, profitable, and advantageous for the government and people of Canada to purchase His Highness’s claims to the territory in question.”

“As for myself, my course is clear. A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die.”

“I have always held those political opinions which point to the universal brotherhood of man, no matter in what shape, form, or color he may be.”

“Let us be French, let us be English, but most importantly, let us be Canadian!”

“I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”

“The Senate is a place where sober second thought is supposed to take place – sober second thought is necessary, but it must not be in a position of preventing what the House of Commons decides to do.”

“I am one of those Scotchmen who, born under the shadow of the Union Jack, have endeavored to do his duty to the best of his ability.”

“A railway must be made from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Atlantic and Pacific are British seas. In the future, we shall be a great nation if we hold the seas.”

“It is not only our duty to make Canada, but to keep it united and to hand it down in all its integrity to our children.”

“I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”

“It is not only our duty to make Canada, but to make it in such a way that it shall be worth making.”

“I am a subject of this great British Empire and owe no allegiance to any other country.”

“The Dominion’s financial policy will be the Conservative party’s policy. I am not for reducing the tariff merely for the sake of reducing it. I stand for a tariff policy that will give employment to the working men of Canada and, at the same time, build up our own industries.”

“Let us be English or let us be French… and above all, let us be Canadians.”

“There is one capital, and one only, in the world, that is, one only that has the right to it, and that is London, and all this talk about Ottawa being made the capital of the Empire is bosh.”

“The Liberal party is the friends of the working man, the friends of the farmer, the friends of the middle-class, the friends of progress, and they propose to Canadianize Canada.”

“The people of Canada are great, but the trouble is, they are scattered too far and wide.”

“We shall all respect the principles of each other and do nothing that would be regarded as a just cause of complaint by any other nation, and at the same time, we shall be able to give an object lesson to all nations in what they should do in similar circumstances.”

“I have no remembrance of my baptism. My parents were Presbyterians, but I am a low-churchman, and as for going to church on Sunday, I would sooner be a jolly old pagan and stand on my head in the sun and make beer offerings to Silenus.”

“I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.”

“In the world, we shall be for ages. We shall go on organizing the great dominion and see it take its place in the great sisterhood of nations.”

“We are all Fenians.”

“I don’t care about being Prime Minister. I don’t care about anything except carrying out the principles of the party.”

“It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

“I must tell you that, as a government, our policy will be to do all we can to remedy the present evils and to promote the great interests of agriculture throughout the Dominion.”

“If I had influence over the minds of the people of Canada, any power over their intellect, I would leave them this legacy: ‘Whatever you do, adhere to the Union.'”

“I am very happy to have a lady presiding over the destinies of this great dominion. I have always been very fond of the ladies, but I am getting old now, and perhaps I am not as fond of them as I used to be.”

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