Best 11 quotes of Pierre Berton on MyQuotes

A Canadian is somebody who knows how to make love in a canoe.

I only write books about dead people. They can't sue.

My best advice to writers is get yourself born in an interesting place.

Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.

The more I see of the country, the less I feel I know about it. There is a saying that after five years in the north every man is an expert; after ten years, a novice.

The nation is bound together by its creative artists and not by parallel lines of rusting steel.

Will a guaranteed annual wage kill incentive among the poor? If a man is given a certain amount of security, won't he quit working? Exactly the same contention could be made about the sons of the wealthy who are left large fortunes. Yet the evidence suggests that, given economic freedom, people will generally choose to do that which interests them most. It is up to society to see that these interests are widened and that too requires investment.

According to accepted newspaper clichés, we all go down fighting. The other day I even read that an 18-month-old baby had died after a long battle with cancer. That has become the mandatory phrase for all who expire, disease-ridden. They battled valiantly; they lost. When I finally depart I hope somebody will write, instead, that I died after a long battle with life.

I am an atheist, a rationalist and a humanist.

I was hated, you know. I made no secret of the fact that I was an atheist. People told me there are no atheists in fox holes. That's nonsense. [interview promoting Marching as to War (2002)]

My TV show enraged people. I had prostitutes on, and I treated them like real people.... I was fired from Maclean's after I wrote a piece called 'Let's Stop Hoaxing The Kids About Sex'. Now I'm the 'beloved author,' the 'beloved historian of Canada,' an icon. I get standing ovations.... I never set out to be a patriot or a popular historian. I just liked storytelling. [interview promoting Marching as to War (2002)]