text:
Withnail and I

Withnail and I is a 1986 film comedy written and directed by Bruce Robinson and starring Richard E. Grant (Withnail), Paul McGann (Marwood, the "I" of the title), Richard Griffiths (Uncle Monty) and Ralph Brown (Danny). The movie, which takes place in England in late 1969, involves the misadventures of a pair of chronically unemployed actors.

Withnail

 * We've gone on holiday by mistake.
 * I think we've been in here too long. I feel unusual.
 * I demand to have some booze!
 * How can it be so cold in here? It's like Greenland in here. We've got to get some booze. It's the only solution to this intense cold. Something's got to be done. We can't go on like this. I'm a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum. I mean, look at us! Nothing that reasonable members of society demand as their rights! No fridges, no televisions, no phones! Much more of this and I'm going to apply for meals on wheels.
 * We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!
 * Listen, we're bona fide, we're not from London.
 * I'm not having this shag sack insulting me! Let him get his drugs out.
 * (Ranting on a mountain) Bastards! You'll all suffer! I'll show the lot of you! I'm gonna be a sta-a-a-a-ar!
 * Monty, you terrible cunt!
 * I assure you I'm not [drunk], officer, honestly. I've only had a few ales.
 * Black puddings are no good to us. I want something's flesh!
 * Nonsense, this is a far superior drink to meths! The wankers on site don't drink it because they can't afford it!
 * There must and shall be aspirin, or I shall die, here, on this fucking mountainside!
 * These are the sort of windows faces look in at!
 * The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news!
 * I'm in a park and I'm practically dead; what good's the countryside?
 * (He spits out a globule of phlegm) Jesus, look at that. Apart from a raw potato, that's the only solid to have passed my lips in the last 60 hours. I must be ill.
 * All right, this is the plan. We get in there and get wrecked, then we eat a pork pie, then we drop a couple of Surmontil-50s each. That means we'll miss out on Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning.
 * Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't.
 * Scrubbers! Scrubbers! Little tarts, they love it!
 * Look at this - accident blackspot? These aren't accidents, they're throwing themselves into the road! Throwing themselves into the road gladly to escape all this hideousness! (Heckles pedestrian) Throw yourself into the road, darling, you haven't got a chance!
 * I feel like a pig shat in my head.
 * Look at my tongue. It's wearing a yellow sock.
 * Don't threaten me with a dead fish!
 * Bastard asked me to understudy Konstantin in The Seagull. I'm not going to understudy anybody. Especially that pimp! Anyway, I loathe those Russian plays. Always full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow.
 * Right, you fucker, I'm going to do the washing up.
 * (Paraphrasing Hamlet) I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth... and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air — look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties! ...How like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither... nor woman neither.

Marwood

 * (Voice-over) Thirteen million Londoners have to wake up to this. Murder and All-Bran and rape. And I'm sitting in this bloody shack and I can't cope with Withnail. I must go home at once and discuss his problems in depth.

 * (Voice-over) Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe that Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell. Making an enemy of our own future.

 * (Voice-over) Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you've got to get out because it's crashing. Then all at once those frozen hours melt out through the nervous system and seep out the pores.

 * (Voice-over) Danny's here. Headhunter to his friends. Headhunter to everyone. He doesn't have any friends. The only people he converses with are his clients, and occasionally the police. The purveyor of rare herbs and proscribed chemicals is back. Will we never be set free?

 * (Voice-over) I could hardly piss straight with fear. Here was a man with 3/4 of an inch of brain who'd taken a dislike to me. What had I done to offend him? I don't consciously offend big men like this. And this one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you'd have to live up a tree.

 * "I fuck arses"? Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses! Maybe he's written this in some moment of drunken sincerity! I'm in considerable danger here, I must get out of here at once.

 * [Contemplating how to kill a chicken for supper] It's got dreadful beady eyes, they stare at you. Best kill it quick before it tries to make friends with us.

 * I'm not from London, you know.

 * Stop saying that, Withnail, of course he's the fucking farmer!

 * A coward you are, Withnail! An expert on bulls you are not!

 * We are not drunks, we are multi-millionaires!

 * You're full of Scotch you silly tool.

 * Jesus Christ! Why have you drugged their onions?!

 * My thumbs have gone weird! I'm in the middle of a bloody overdose! My heart's beating like a fucked clock! I feel dreadful, I feel really dreadful.

Uncle Monty

 * It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, "I will never play the Dane."
 * (referring to his cat) Get that damned little swine out of here! It's trying to get itself in with you. Trying for even more advantage. It's obsessed with its gut. It's like a bloody rugby ball now, it will die, it will die!
 * (referring to his cat) Yet again that oaf has destroyed my day!
 * Oh! you little traitors. I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is a certain je ne sais quoi - oh, so very special - about a firm, young carrot...Excuse me...
 * I mean to have you, even if it must be burglary!
 * Oh my boys, my boys, we are at the end of an age! We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in, shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour, and here we are, we three; perhaps the last island of beauty... in the world
 * Here hare here... ...here hare here!
 * Sherry? Oh dear no no... No, I'd be sucked into his trap! One of us has got to stay on guard. He's so mauve, we don't know what he's planning!
 * I often wonder where Norman is now. Probably wintering with his mother in Guildford.  A cat, and the rain... Vim under the sink, and both bars on.  But old now, old.  There can be no true beauty without decay.
 * I'm preparing myself to forgive you. I think you've been punished enough. I think we better release you from the légume, and transfer your talents to the meat.
 * I can never touch meat until it's cooked. As a youth, I used to weep in butchers' shops!
 * Come on lads, let's get home, the sky's beginning to bruise. Night must fall and we shall be forced to camp.
 * Go with it. It's society's crime, not ours.

Danny

 * You're looking very beautiful, man. You been away? St Peter preached the epistles to the apostles looking like that.
 * I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.
 * Change down, man, find your neutral space. You got a rush. It will pass. Be seated.
 * If you're hanging on to a rising balloon, you're presented with a difficult decision — let go before it's too late or hang on and keep getting higher, posing the question: how long can you keep a grip on the rope? They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's, man.  The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over.  And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.

Jake The Poacher

 * I been watching you, especially you, prancing like a tit. You want working on, boy!

Dialogue

 * Withnail: [reading from the paper] "In a world exclusive interview, 33-year-old shotputter Geoff Woade, who weighs 317 pounds, admitted taking massive doses of anabolic steroids, drugs banned in sport. 'He used to get in bad tempers and act up,' said his wife. 'He used to pick on me. But now he's stopped, he's much better in our sex life and in our general life.'" Jesus Christ, this huge, thatched head with its earlobes and cannonball is now considered sane. "Geoff Woade is feeling better and is now prepared to step back into society and start tossing his orb about." Look at him. Look at Geoff Woade. His head must weigh fifty pounds on its own. Imagine the size of his balls. Imagine getting into a fight with the fucker!
 * Marwood: Please, I don't feel good.
 * Withnail: That's what you'd say, but that wouldn't wash with Geoff. No, he'd like a bit of pleading. Add spice to it. In fact, he'd probably tell you what he was going to do before he did it. "I'm going to pull your head off." "Oh no, please, don't pull my head off." "I'm going to pull your head off, because I don't like your head."

 * Withnail: Have you been at the controls?
 * Marwood: What are you talking about?
 * Withnail: The thermostats! What have you done to them?
 * Marwood: I haven't touched them.
 * Withnail: Then why has my head gone numb? I must have some booze. I demand to have some booze!

 * Withnail: You've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? It's ridiculous. I've been to drama school. I'm good-looking. I tell you, I've a fuck sight more talent than half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can't I get on television?
 * Marwood: Well, I don't know. It'll happen.
 * Withnail: Will it? That's what you say. The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news.

 * Withnail: Where is he? I'm utterly arseholed.
 * Marwood: We're early. We want to get in there, don't we?  Eat some cake. Soak up the booze.

 * Marwood: What about what's-his-name?
 * Withnail: What about him?
 * Marwood: Why don't you give him a call?
 * Withnail: What for?
 * Marwood: To ask him about his house.
 * Withnail: You want me to call what's-his-name and ask him about his house?
 * Marwood: Why not?
 * Withnail: All right. What's his number?
 * Marwood: I've no idea, I've never met him.
 * Withnail: Well neither have I. What the fuck are you talking about?

 * Danny: I happened to be looking for a suit for The Coalman two weeks ago. For reasons I can't really discuss with you, he had to go to Jamaica. Got busted coming back through Heathrow. He had a weight under his fez. We worked out it would be very handy karma for him to get hold of a suit. But he's a very low-temperature spade, the Coalman. Goes into court in his caftan and a bell. This doesn't go down at all well. They can handle the caftan but they cannot handle the bell. So there's this judge sitting there in the cape like fucking Batman with this really rather far out-looking hat.
 * Withnail: Wig.
 * Danny: No, man. This was more like a long white hat. So he looks at the Coalman and says, "What's all this? This is a court, man. This ain't fancy dress." And the Coalman looks at him and says, "Do you think you look normal, Your Honour?" Cunt give him two years.

 * Danny: Has he just been busted?
 * Marwood: No.
 * Danny: Then why's he wearing that old suit?
 * Withnail: Old suit?! This suit was cut by Hawke's of Savile Row! Just because the best tailoring you've ever seen is above your fucking appendix doesn't mean anything!
 * Danny: Don't get uptight with me, man. Because if you do, I'll have to give you a dose of medicine. And if I spike you, you'll know you've been spoken to.
 * Withnail: You wouldn't spike me, you're too mean. Besides, there's nothing invented I couldn't take.
 * Danny: If I medicined you, you'd think a brain tumour was a birthday present.
 * Withnail: I could take double anything you could.
 * Danny: Very, very foolish words, man.
 * Marwood: He's right, Withnail, look at him! His mechanism's gone, he's had more drugs than you've had hot dinners.
 * Withnail: I'm not having this shag sack insulting me! Let him get his drugs out!
 * Danny: This doll is extremely dangerous; it has voodoo qualities. [takes pill out of doll] Trade: Pheno-dihydrochloride-benzorex. Street: The Embalmer.
 * Withnail: Balls, I'll swallow it and run a mile!
 * Danny: Cool your boots, man. This pill's valued at two quid.
 * Withnail: Two quid? You're out of your mind!
 * Marwood: That's sense, Withnail.
 * Withnail: You can stuff it up your arse for nothing and fuck off while you're doing it!

 * Withnail: Have you got soup? Why don't I get any soup?
 * Marwood: Coffee.
 * Withnail: Why don't you use a cup like any other human being?
 * Marwood: Why don't you wash up occasionally like any other human being?
 * Withnail: (Appalled) How dare you! How dare you! How dare you call me inhumane?!
 * Marwood: I didn't call you inhumane. You merely imagined it. Calm down.
 * Withnail: Right you fucker, I'm going to do the washing up!
 * Marwood: No, you can't, it's impossible. I swear to you, I've looked into it. Listen to me, listen to me! There are are things in there - there's a teabag growing! You haven't slept in 60 hours, you're in no shape to tackle it. Wait till the morning and we'll go in together.
 * Withnail: This is the morning. Stand aside!
 * Marwood: No, you don't understand! I think there may be something living in there.
 * Withnail: What do you mean, a rat?
 * Marwood: It's possible, it's possible.
 * Withnail: Then the fucker will rue the day!

 * Withnail: Are we there?
 * Marwood: No we're not, we're here. We're in the middle of a fucking gale. Look out that window, if you see anything, anything at all, tell me.
 * Withnail: Where's the whiskey?
 * Marwood: What for?
 * Withnail: I've got a bastard behind the eyes. I can't take aspirins without a drink. Where's the aspirins?
 * Marwood: Probably in the bathroom.
 * Withnail: You mean we've come out here in the middle of fucking nowhere without aspirins?
 * Marwood: Where are we?!
 * Withnail: How should I know where we are? I feel like a pig shat in my head!

 * Withnail: Would it be in bad form to plagiarise a toast?
 * Monty: Depends entirely on the quality of the wine. In this case, it most certainly would not.
 * Withnail: In that case, "To a delightful weekend in the country."

 * Withnail: 'Scuse me. We were wondering if we could possibly purchase a pheasant off of you.
 * Jake: No. I've got nothing to sell.
 * Withnail: Come on, old boy. What's in your hump?
 * Jake: Now look, you. These pheasants are for my pot. These eels here are for his pot. What makes you possibly think I've got anything for your pot?
 * Withnail: What pot?
 * Marwood: The cooking pot.

 * Marwood: Withnail, you bastard, wake up. Wake up, you bastard or I burn this bastard bed down!
 * Withnail: (Stirring) I deny all accusations. What do you want?
 * Marwood: I have just narrowly avoided having a buggering. And I've come in here with the express intention of wishing one on you! Having said that, I now intend to leave for London.
 * Withnail: Hold on, don't let your imagination run away with you...
 * Marwood: Imagination! I have just finished fighting a naked man! How dare you tell him I'm a toilet trader?!
 * Withnail: Tactical necessity. If I hadn't told him you were active we'd never have got the cottage.
 * Marwood: I'd never have wanted it, not with him in it!
 * Withnail: I never thought he'd come all this way.
 * Marwood: Monty? He'd go to New York!
 * Withnail: Calculated risk.
 * Marwood: What is all this "tactical necessity" and "calculated risk?!" This is me, naked in a corner! And how dare you tell him I love you?! And how dare you tell him you rejected me?! How dare you tell him that?!
 * Withnail: (Wry smile) Sorry about that. Got a bit carried away. Sort of said it without thinking.
 * Marwood: (Takes the shotgun) Well let me tell you something, Withnail. If he comes into my room again, it's murder, and you'll be held responsible in law!

Taglines

 * You are invited to spend an hilarious weekend in the English countryside.
 * If you don't remember the sixties, don't worry — neither did they.

title: Withnail and I


text:
Canada

Canada, formerly known as the Dominion of Canada, is a country located in North America consisting of 10 provinces and 3 territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean. At 9.98 million square kilometers in total, Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the world's longest land border shared by the same two countries. Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy, constitutional monarchy, and a Commonwealth realm, meaning that it has British monarch King Charles III, the leader of the Church of England, as its head of state. Its head of government is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The official languages of the Canada are English and French.

A

 * Canada is today the most successful pluralist society on the face of our globe, without any doubt in my mind... That is something unique to Canada. It is an amazing global human asset.
 * Aga Khan IV, in "Canada: 'A model for the world', in The Globe and Mail (2 February 2002)

 * Canada has an experience of governance of which much of the world stands in dire need. It is a world of increasing dissension and conflict in which a significant contribution is the failure of different ethnic, tribal, religious, or social groups to search for, and agree upon, a common space for harmonious co-existence.
 * Aga Khan IV, address at the Leadership and Diversity Conference Gatineau, Quebec, Canada (19 May 2004)

 * Canada has for many years been a beacon to the rest of the world for its commitment to pluralism and for its support for the multicultural richness and diversity of its peoples
 * Aga Khan IV, as quoted in AKDN press release "Aga Khan Welcomes Government of Canada's Partnership in New Global Centre for Pluralism, Ottawa, Canada" (18 April 2005)

 * I was born in Canada and I'm Canadian... I grew up in Canada.
 * Fraser Aird, as quoted in "Fraser: I Had to Choose Canada" (9 October 2015), Daily Record, United Kingdom

 * Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.
 * Article XI, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union

B

 * [W]hen Canada's having its way with you, you know something's gone horribly wrong.
 * Michael Ballaban, "Watch These Russian Missiles Completely Tear Through A Derelict Wreck" (17 February 2014), Foxtrot Alpha, Jalopnik

 * If aliens invaded Quebec, the U.S. press would give it two inches in the entertainment section.
 * Sparrow, as quoted in Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel.

 * The Canadian game is rigged, and has been from the start.
 * Drew Brown and Mack Lamoureux, "The Last Best West: Meet Alberta’s New Separatists" (29 February 2016), Vice News

 * Oh God! Oh Montreal!
 * Samuel Butler, Psalm of Montreal; see Spectator (May 18, 1878); a writer in the Dial (Jan. 6, 1916), attributes it to W. H. Hurlbert; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 524

 * "...Right here in Canada, white Canadians have violated the rights of Indigenous peoples in more ways than we can count. One of the most heinous abuses against Indigenous women is forced sterilization, where white Canadians violated Indigenous women's bodies to make it impossible for them to conceive and become mothers....This is genocide. This abuse of human rights is not something of the past. White Canadians have forcibly sterilized Indigenous women just within the past few years in 2017...In the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government learned how expensive it would be to build accessible health services in the north. So instead of building, the federal government decided that these isolated Indigenous women should use birth control, even though birth control was illegal at the time...They broke their own laws because they did not value accessible and safe healthcare for Indigenous peoples...The right to choice must also include human rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples, with whom we live amongst on stolen land....If you believe in the right to choice, for the right to legal and safe abortions, then you must also fight for bodily autonomy for black persons....We have a shameful history in how we have treated black persons. Human rights and bodily autonomy were violated at the hands of White colonists during slavery. black people were auctioned off while chained and likely naked, forced to carry a fetus to term, and were sterilized, all of course without their consent.....Our fight for right to choice must consider the histories of abuses and inequalities, of White bodies controlling vulnerable and marginalized bodies, of White bodies controlling who is vulnerable and is who is marginalized...Your fight for bodily autonomy must be all-inclusive. If your fight for human rights are not universal, it is self serving and it allows unjust harm onto vulnerable and marginalized peoples. One should have full control over their body. Our body. Our choice...."

 * Shahzi Bokhari What Bodily Autonomy Means - Raise the Hammer May 29, 2019

C

 * Do I do business with Canadian racketeers? I don't even know what street Canada is on.
 * Al Capone, as quoted in Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada (2009) by Stephen Schneider, chapter Five, p. 206

 * Canada's use of the term "visible minorities" to identify people it considers susceptible to racial discrimination came under fire at the United Nations Wednesday - for being racist.
 * CanWest News Service, "UN calls Canada racist for 'visible minorities' tag" (8 March 2007)

 * And slowly, very slowly, the gorgeous dream grows bright, Where rise the four democracies of Anglo-Saxon might; The Republic, fair, alone; The Commonwealth, new-grown; The proud, reserved Dominion, with a story of her own, And One that shall emerge at length from travail war, and blight.
 * Bliss Carman, Ode on the Coronation of King Edward (1902); partly mentioned in Our Empire Story (1903) by H. E. Marshall

 * Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture,   and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how,  French government,   and American culture.
 * John Robert Colombo (1965), as quoted in "The Bumper Book of Insults" (1993) by Nancy McPhee, p. 108

 * 66 per cent of the average monthly income to make payments on the average single-detached Canadian house
 * Conservative Party according to Housing experts weigh in on Pierre Poilievre's latest video (2 days ago)

D

 * We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds.
 * Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

 * Canada is a country that works better in practice than in theory.
 * Stéphane Dion, "One nation or many?" (16 November 2006), The Economist

E

 * [O]ne of the great events of our time... So it is that everywhere in Canada, and especially here in the heart of French Canada, there seethes a life of intensity, a deep will for renewal. All we see, everywhere in Canada, is a shock of ideas, questions, demands, projects, a whole vigorous churning which is the tumult of life itself.
 * Queen Elizabeth II, speech at the Montreal's world's fair in 1967, as quoted in "Fifty years on, does ‘Vive le Québec libre’ still resonate?" (21 July 2017), by Konrad Yakabuski, The Globe and Mail

F

 * Belgium... they're the Canada of France! There, I said it!
 * Craig Ferguson, at the 2008 White House Correspondents' Dinner, as quoted in C-Span (26 April 2008), 1:02:10
 * It has sometimes been argued that in gaining Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had undermined her position in America. Without the French threat, why should the thirteen colonies stay loyal? Yet the loss of America had the unforeseen effect of securing Canada for the Empire, thanks to the flood of English-speaking Loyalists who, together with new British settlers, would eventually reduce the French Quebecois to a beleaguered minority. The amazing thing is that so many people should have voted with their feet against American independence, choosing loyalty to King and Empire over 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
 * Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

G

 * Canada harbours its own disgraceful legacy. Down through the decades, scores of federal and provincial laws isolated, dispossessed and ghettoized one racial or ethnic minority after another. Asians weren't allowed to vote in Canada until the late 1940s; federally-registered Indians had to wait until 1960.
 * Terry Glavin, "Canadians have no reason to be smug about race" (November 2014), The Ottawa Citizen

 * Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.
 * Andrei Gromyko, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune (30 June 1953)

J

 * We shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada.
 * Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Rogers Clark (25 December 1780)

 * I'm about to go to Canada, I can't wait. Tell bitches I know Drake and get my asshole ate.
 * Rufus Johnson, "Justin Bieber" (21 May 2012), This Guy's A Weirdo (2012)

K

 * Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.
 * John F. Kennedy, of the United States and Canada, in an address to the Canadian Parliament (17 May 1961)

 * It is a deep personal privilege to address a nation-wide Canadian audience. Over and above any kinship of U.S. citizens and Canadians as North Americans there is a singular historical relationship between American Negroes and Canadians. Canada is not merely a neighbor to Negroes. Deep in our history of struggle for freedom Canada was the north star. The Negro slave, denied education, de-humanized, imprisoned on cruel plantations, knew that far to the north a land existed where a fugitive slave if he survived the horrors of the journey could find freedom. The legendary underground railroad started in the south and ended in Canada. The freedom road links us together. Our spirituals, now so widely admired around the world, were often codes. We sang of "heaven" that awaited us and the slave masters listened in innocence, not realizing that we were not speaking of the hereafter. Heaven was the word for Canada and the Negro sang of the hope that his escape on the underground railroad would carry him there. One of our spirituals, "Follow the Drinking Gourd," in its disguised lyrics contained directions for escape. The gourd was the big dipper, and the north star to which its handle pointed gave the celestial map that directed the flight to the Canadian border.
 * Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967 CBC Massey Lectures, "Conscience for Change" in The Lost Massey Lectures

 * [T]here’s a very good way to distinguish between America and Canada. In the Canadian Constitution it defines its objectives, this is the British North America Act of 1867, that’s our constitution, it said, “The purpose of this act” which was to make Canada one dominion, “was to provide for peace, order, and good government.” For us, it’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For them it’s peace, order, and good government. That tells everything you want to know about it.
 * Charles Krauthammer, interview with Bill Kristol (2015)

J

 * We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace... we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.
 * Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Rogers Clark (25 December 1780)

 * The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.
 * Thomas Jefferson, statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane (4 August 1812)

L

 * The testing of cruise missiles in Canada proved very contentious. The government explained its decision in both political and technical terms. Politically, testing demonstrated alliance solidarity over the modernization of NATO's nuclear deterrent. Technically, testing the missile over terrain similar to that of the northern Soviet Union would improve its effectiveness, and allow the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) to develop an anti-cruise capability. The tests would take place in a 2,200-kilometre test corridor that included parts of the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Tests could involve either releasing the missile in a "free flight" to its target, or allowing its guidance system to direct both the missile and the launch aircraft to the target in a "captive carry" test. The tests take several hours, and involve a number of aircraft in both Canada and the United States, from tankers to fighters to Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes. After the first few years of tests, attention shifted from monitoring the missile itself to attempting to track and intercept it. In order to simulate the climate of the northern Soviet Union, most cruise missile tests in Canada have taken place in the winter months.
 * James Lee, "Cruise Missile Testing in Canada: The Post-Cold War Debate", Political and Social Affairs Division, Parliamentary Research Branch, Depository Services Program Government of Canada, (January 21, 1994).

 * Forty thousand Canadians alone... came south to volunteer for the Union cause.
 * James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me

 * The Canadians have the Loonie, and we can have the Ronnie.
 * Chester Lott, on Ronald Reagan, as quoted in an interview in New York Times Sunday Magazine (20 June 2004)

M

 * As individuals, we are all, at least in part, products of our own histories, which include our geographical place, our times, our social classes, and our family backgrounds. I am a Canadian who has grown up in this country and so have enjoyed an extraordinary period, unusual in much of the world’s history, of peace, stability, and prosperity. That has surely shaped the ways in which I look at the world, perhaps with more optimism about things getting better than I might have if I had grown up in Afghanistan or Somalia. And I am also a product of my parents’ and grandparents’ history. I grew up with some knowledge, incomplete and fragmentary to be sure, of World War II, which my father fought in, and of World War I, which drew in both my grandfathers.
 * Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008)
 * The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.
 * Mairead Maguire in "Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex", Common Dreams (2014-10-14)

 * Canadians love Canada, a lot. Canadians love Canada so much that the title of this essay will make some not even bother to read it. Some will call me anti-Canadian. Some will leave comments about the CBC running "Indian Propaganda" against its citizens. In 2014, when I recorded my last comedy special Red Man Laughing for CBC, there were death threats left on the Edmonton Journal website when they ran a story of our sold out first night. This is the Canada I know well... [C]olonialism is not just a thing of the past — it is ongoing. This country was founded by coercing, sometimes violently so, Indigenous peoples off of their territories to provide access to the rich natural resources that would form this country’s economy... Canada’s economy has also killed Indigenous peoples. So what are we celebrating exactly? We never have — and still don’t — treat Indigenous people fairly. There are too many cases where provincial and federal governments delay and ignore land issues that are destroying our health and well-being.
 * Ryan McMahon, "Why I Won't Be Attending Canada's 150th Birthday Party" (2016-06-18), Colonization Road, CBC FirstHand

 * As always, Canada will now bury its war dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does. It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.
 * Kevin Myers, as quoted in The Daily Telegraph, London
 * It’s a unique experience to grow up in Canada, and when I explain it to non-Canadians, I feel like I am describing a dream I had, because the Canadian experience is not well known outside of Canada.
 * Mike Myers, in "My Canada", the introduction to his memoir Canada (2016)
 * Canada may not have put a man on the moon, but it’s been awfully nice to the man on earth.
 * Mike Myers in "A Canadian Future", the sixth chapter of his memoir Canada (2016)

N

 * For among nations--as within nations-the soundest unity is that which respects diversity, and the strongest cohesion is that which rejects coercion. Over the years, the people of Canada have come to understand these concepts particularly well. Within your own borders, you have been working to bring a wide variety of peoples and provinces and points of view into a great national union--a union which honors the integrity of its constituent elements. It was Prime Minister Laurier who said of Canada's differing components: "I want the marble to remain the marble; I want the granite to remain the granite; I want the oak to remain the oak." This has been the Canadian way. As a result, Canadians have helped to teach the world, as Governor-General Massey once said, that the "toleration of differences is the measure of civilization." Today, more than ever before, we need to apply that understanding to the whole range of world affairs. And to begin with, we must apply it to our dealings with one another.
 * Richard Nixon; Address to a Joint Meeting of the Canadian Parliament Online, The American Presidency Project; 14 April 1972

P

 * Canada is an open, welcoming country that stands by its citizens. We are a nation of millions of immigrants and refugees, of hundreds of cultures, languages and religions bound by one, unwavering, unshakable belief: we are stronger not in spite of our differences, but because of them. These tweets by Fox News dishonour the memory of the six victims and their families by spreading misinformation, playing identity politics, and perpetuating fear and division within our communities.
 * Kate Purchase, communications director for the Prime Minister's Office, in criticism of Fox News for not immediately clarifying misreported information that the shooter was Moroccan not Caucasian in the January 30 Quebec mosque shooting, as quoted by in, Fox News deletes erroneous tweet on Quebec City shooter’s nationality (31 January 2017)

R

 * [C]elebrations are supposed to remind us that Canada is place of tolerance, peace, prosperity, and freedom. But, for the majority of us, this could not be further from the truth. In reality Canada is a nation built on genocide and sustained by the misery of millions.
 * Revolutionary Communist Party, "Call-Out: Fuck the 150th" (24 May 2017), Fuck the 150th

 * Canada, a country which is a breeding-ground for all other forms of oppression, constantly dehumanizing the most marginalized within our societies. Canada: a source of misery for millions and millions, at home, and around the world. Canada: a country which must be ended if the masses in this country are to enjoy even the most basic human dignity.
 * Revolutionary Communist Party, "An Appeal on the 150th Anniversary of a Prison House Of Nations" (1 July 2017), Fuck the 150th

 * In the month of January, Canada created more new jobs than we did.
 * Mitt Romney, speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (11 February 2011)

 * For twenty-one years I have lived in Canada, the country of promise. There is a magnificent air of freedom about this country, a freedom which the winds of all seasons, sweeping through the breadth of the continent seem to carry on their wings-an ideal place of escape for those who have been oppressed and enslaved elsewhere, for those who wish to turn over a new leaf, who hope for change, for betterment, who want to live their lives as they please.
 * Chava Rosenfarb Introduction (1971) to Exile At Last: Selected Poems (2013)

S

 * After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans … There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.
 * John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin

 * Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.
 * John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin

 * The old cliché about having all your eggs in one basket takes on new meaning with Canada and the United States, because there is something even more wrong about having all your eggs in someone else's basket. It is worse still if that country is much larger than you and worst of all if they don't have all their eggs in your basket. This is not a relationship. It is a dependency. Canada's survival will depend largely on its ability to change that dependency back into a relationship. And one of the key factors in doing that will be the redistribution of our trade. But we can't do that if we have no politicians willing to take the lead.
 * John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin

 * This is the law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall survive; That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, This is the Will of the Yukon,—Lo, how she makes it plain!
 * Robert Service, Law of the Yukon; as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 924

 * There's a land where the mountains are nameless And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There's a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back—and I will.
 * Robert Service, Spell of the Yukon; as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 924

 * Saskatchewan is much like Texas; except it's more friendly to the United States.
 * Attributed to Adlai Stevenson. This was attributed to Stevenson without reference in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About Texas (2006) by Donna Ingham, p. 92. It was also attributed without reference in "Reporters' Notebook", The Buffalo News, September 24, 1992. No closer connection to Stevenson has been found.

T

 * Canada is, in fact, the true model of what has always been seen there.
 * Alexis de Tocqueville, Centralised Government in Canada andDecentralised Government in America (1856)

 * Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
 * Être votre voisin, c'est comme dormir avec un éléphant; quelque douce et placide que soit la bête, on subit chacun de ses mouvements et de ses grognements.
 * Pierre Trudeau, Addressing the Press Club in Washington, D.C. (25 March 1969) - Audio clip

 * For me, to represent people who represent the future of Canada and the great challenges we will face over the coming decades — this is where I wanted to start. … I'm a teacher; I'm a convenor; I'm a gatherer; I'm someone who reaches out to people and is deeply interested in what they have to say. And people see that I'm not faking it. I'm actually genuinely committed to this dialogue that we're opening up, and this understanding that needs to happen in order to be an effective MP.
 * Justin Trudeau, on winning his riding nomination in Quebec, as quoted in "Trudeau wins Montreal riding nomination" in CBC News (30 April 2007)

 * It's an old idea from the 19th century. It is something that is not relevant to the vibrant, extraordinary, culture that is Quebec as Quebec is an amazing part of Canada. Nationalism is based on a smallness of thought that closes in, that builds up barriers between people, and has nothing to do with the Canada we should be building. It stands against everything my father ever believed.
 * Justin Trudeau, responding to Michael Ignatieff's Quebec nationalism proposal during a interview on.

 * We should be past tolerance in Canada... In Canada, can we speak of acceptance, openness, friendship, understanding? It is about where we are going and what we are going through every day in our diverse and rich communities... Tolerating someone means accepting their right to exist on the condition that they don’t disturb us too, too much.
 * Justin Trudeau, as quoted by, Justin Trudeau rules out burkini ban in Canada (23 August 2016)

 * Americans who come to know Canada informally, such as our tourists, as well as those whose approach is more academic, learn that Canada is a broad land--broad in mind, broad in spirit, and broad in physical expanse. They find that the composition of your population and the evolution of your political institutions hold a lesson for the other nations of the earth. Canada has achieved internal unity and material strength, and has grown in stature in the world community, by solving problems that might have hopelessly divided and weakened a less gifted people. Canada's eminent position today is a tribute to the patience, tolerance, and strength of character of her people, of both French and British strains. For Canada is enriched by the heritage of France as well as of Britain, and Quebec has imparted the vitality and spirit of France itself to Canada. Canada's notable achievement of national unity and progress through accommodation, moderation, and forbearance can be studied with profit by her sister nations.
 * Harry S. Truman; Address Before the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa Online, The American Presidency Project; 11 June 1947

Z

 * The redistribution system that Canada has with the transfer payments, anywhere else would have social instability. But to be blunt, Canadians are just too damn polite.
 * Peter Zeihan, as quoted in "The Last Best West: Alberta's New Separatists" (29 February 2016), by Drew Brown and Mack Lamoureux, Vice News

 * Canada’s demographic situation is similar to the rest of the developed world — a large population moving toward retirement and hardly any young people in the replacement generation coming up.
 * Peter Zeihan, interview with Jen Gerson

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title: Canada