Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Brian Mulroney

If your only objective is to be popular, you're going to be popular but you will be known as the Prime Minister who achieved nothing.

We created the Cabinet Committee on the Environment to review the environmental implications of all government initiatives. I think what made us successful was the fact that it was a sustained approach. We did something new every year.

If everything is very important, then nothing is important.

You can't be chasing 15 rabbits. Otherwise, the public mind cannot follow you.

We decided that the environment was an integral part of our policies and the political thrust of our government. We gave it the priority and we sustained it with the money required to make it happen.

I can see now a vision emerging how Canada is going to profit in the future from our Arctic resources without destroying the environment on which it is all based.

Whether the process proves to be Kyoto or something else, let's acknowledge the urgency of global warming.

It's my responsibility, and entirely my fault, Of course I regret it. It's the kind of locker-room conversation we all use, but as prime minister I shouldn't have used it.

The biggest trading partner of the United States is not West Germany or Japan, it's right here.

You have to spend your political capital on great causes for your country.

I would go to them and I would explain this is the price of going forward. We're going to move ahead in all these other areas. We're moving ahead in tax reform and GST, we are moving ahead on trade, but this will not be done at the cost of the environment.

In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all an enemy.

The Conservatives over the years have done a great deal, from Sir John A, to Diefenbaker, and others.

First, President Reagan was not enthusiastic. But I built up a relationship with him in other areas and then persuaded him that this was important to us and to me, and that we had to at least be in the process of looking at this seriously.

So that was Reagan's political problem. As a rancher in California, he was an environmentalist himself. But the President of the United States doesn't control everything that happens in Washington.

For example, the Prime Minister earlier this year talked about the importance of the Arctic to our future. He's right. A hundred years from now, the strength of Canada is going to be coming from our resources in the Arctic.

There are so many demands on your time, on your resources, and on the prestige of the government.

And look, I was a big, brassy guy who won and won big. I did what I wanted.

Trudeau's contribution was not to build Canada but to destroy it, and I had to come in and save it.

You cannot name a Canadian prime minister who has done as many significant things as I did, because there are none.

And, of course, the fact that Maurice Strong, a Canadian, was in charge made it important for us to pull up our socks and become leaders in this field. Now, here is a field we should be a leader in!

I am not denying anything I did not say.

You accumulate political capital to spend it on noble causes for Canada. If you're afraid to spend your capital, you shouldn't be there.

When I appointed the Minister of the Environment to major cabinet status, the Planning and Priorities committee, the signals that that sent through Ottawa were major, because that's what the bureaucracy understands.

Every cabinet minister gets a mission statement from the Prime Minister.

I think the government has to reposition environment on top of their national and international priorities.

Once you articulate an agenda, you have to follow it.

At summits Margaret Tatcher was the only woman. Always perfectly coiffed, splendidly dressed - beautiful maroon or dark blue suits. That lovely diamond brooch. She would never speak to an issue without having absolutely exhausted the research on the file. She spoke very confidently because of it.

Every argument that Margaret Thatcher ever made internationally didn't have a great deal to do with her contempt for Communism - she never really got into that. What she talked about was giving freedom to tens of millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe. She was an inspirational leader when it came to discussing her belief in freedom. More visceral and moral.

Margaret Thatcher inherited the sick man of Europe in 1979 and transformed it into a powerhouse. When she left office, it was Britain redefined. And of course the frosting on the cake was her action in the Falklands, where she gave Britain back some of its pizzazz, addressed some past yearning and great memories. So she gave them back their pride. That was the first great thing she did.

This country is made up of small towns and big dreams.

I commend Sri Chinmoy for his faith and serenity, and I hope he will continue to exert his calming and constructive influence on the international community for many years to come.

Nobody has achievements like this ... you cannot name a Canadian prime minister who has done as many significant things as I did, because there are none.

Like all of us, there were many facets to Margaret Thatcher's personality. In private she was kind, thoughtful, charming. Very attentive to her interlocutors. She took time to be concerned - she knew all about my children and wife Mila and so on.

My second biggest mistake in life, for which I have no one to blame but myself, is having accepted payments in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber for a mandate he gave me after I left office... My biggest mistake in life, by far, was ever agreeing to be introduced to Karlheinz Schreiber in the first place.