Quotes

[on the 'War on Drugs'] It's just a political gasconade, a shambles. There are over a million incarcerated people in the U.S., almost all of them for Mickey Mouse offences - you know, driving a truck with marijuana. There are 48 million Americans with criminal records. Now, about 20 million or more of them are driving under the influence 10 years ago, or being disorderly at a fraternity party 25 years ago - not the sort of thing that would influence anybody into wondering, 'Will I hire this man?'.. The ones who end up in prison sit there like zombies and then go back, not empowered to do anything to earn a livable amount of money than the sort of conduct that got them there in the first place.

[on the U.S. Constitution] I don't think it's working well now. To start with, they've got to restore individual liberties. Their whole claim to being the land of the free is the Bill of Rights, and it's been put to the shredder. For notorious reasons I could wax quite declarative on this subject and I won't inflict that on you, but the fifth, sixth, eighth amendments have all gone over the side. That's what American exceptionalism has come down to.

[on being incarcerated in the U.S. for fraud and the obstruction of justice] It's not the kind of experience that expands your affection for the jurisdiction responsible for you being in prison, and it didn't. What I hope is that I am a person with a greater sense of humility, a greater concern for disadvantaged people and stylistically more rigorous writing, and less self-indulgent, a little less bemused and more focused. That is not a massive condemnation of the former me. I wasn't a bad person, but I hope I have grown from this.

Unionized teachers have destroyed much of the state school system.

I may have made a mistake in renouncing my Canadian citizenship, which I have never ceased to promise to try to regain.

I always keep a firewall between my own travails and my perception of public-policy issues. Otherwise I would retain no credibility as a commentator.

Economics is half psychology and half grade three arithmetic, and the U.S. does not now have either half right.

To be completely truthful, I've never gone cock-a-hoop for this whole 'Zoomer' thing.

[on Pierre Trudeau] He was a great prime minister, but those who would put him up as the greatest prime minister - or think that he was a great statesman in the time of Thatcher and Reagan and Helmut Kohl - are smoking something.

For all the admirable qualities of the United States, it is at times an irritatingly brash country. The British can be condescending and hidebound and, of course, the French can be terribly obtuse. But these are the three countries that we've been closest to, so we should start by emulating the things we like in them, while trying to avoid their weaknesses. There's nothing wrong with Canadians being Canadian. We're not a bad people to be.