In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly.

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.

The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers.

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto science. On the contrary, it is integral to science, as also to scholarship in general.

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality.

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol.

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.

What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the Governments of the world.

Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold, but the country that they must rely on for support and encouragement.

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves.

Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science.

A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of thousands of supra-national NGOs.

Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.

In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality ethnicity class and color.

Idealism is the highest form of reason.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

Yet there is disappointment in Washington and in the United States that Canada is not supporting us fully.

Canada is hockey.

Another turn in my life happened when I took on the Canada Council.

Two races share today the soil of Canada. These people had not always been friends. But I hasten to say it. There is no longer any family here but the human family. It matters not the language people speak, or the altars at which they kneel.

My plan was to stay in Canada to make films.

I'd be prouder still to say I was Canada's 10th woman prime minister.

An uncle of mine emigrated to Canada and couldn't take his guitar with him. When I found it in the attic, I'd found a friend for life.

Not so much in Canada, but certainly in the US, as I'm sure you know, money is all, and if they can get another 26 programs of the same thing even though it advances the culture or those actor's careers not at all it doesn't matter.

Have you ever, on a cloudless night, looked down from a passing aircraft flying over Canada? Endless, glowing strings of cities, towns, and homesteads. Stretching on and on, one province to the next. With only the stars in the distance.

We came off the road of the last tour very inspired to just keep playing, so we went to Canada.

My great hope would be that Quebec would realize itself fully as a distinct part of Canada, and stay Canadian, bringing to Canada a part of its richness.

In Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination.

Our expanding Canadian operations are concrete evidence of General Motors confidence in Canada.