Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Margaret Trudeau

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian author Margaret Trudeau.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Margaret Trudeau

Margaret Joan Trudeau is a Canadian author, actress, photographer, former television talk show hostess, and social advocate for people with bipolar disorder, with which she is diagnosed. She is the former wife of Pierre Trudeau, 15th prime minister of Canada; they divorced in 1984, during his final months in office. She is the mother of Justin Trudeau, the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada; the journalist and author Alexandre "Sacha" Trudeau; and the deceased Michel Trudeau. She is the first woman in Canadian history to have been both the wife and the mother of prime ministers.

I miss being exposed to the leading thinkers of the world.
A truly empowered woman turns her values into verbs. She understands what she values most, and she takes steps to bring that value to life.
Mania is the most destructive of the forces. Everybody around you will tell you you're in trouble, and you can't hear what they are saying. — © Margaret Trudeau
Mania is the most destructive of the forces. Everybody around you will tell you you're in trouble, and you can't hear what they are saying.
I was a late bloomer on the career front.
I wince at some of the things I did as the young wife of Canada's fifteenth prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
If you rely completely on protocol, you can become a robot.
I've had enough of being public property.
Everywhere I go, particularly when there's people who know me or recognize me, I get the warmest hugs and happiest sighs full of hope and full of relief.
Everyone wants a loving, equal relationship.
I can't be a rose in any man's lapel.
There's nothing antifeminist about showing a lovely body; it's part of the person you are.
I am a free spirit that must survive in a free world.
I prepared myself for my marriage to Pierre Trudeau, but I didn't prepare myself for marriage to the prime minister. — © Margaret Trudeau
I prepared myself for my marriage to Pierre Trudeau, but I didn't prepare myself for marriage to the prime minister.
I had to divorce my husband, the prime minister. I found it terribly overwhelming.
I tend to keep the press at a distance, you know, and I don't really react to what they say. I react to what I feel more.
Growing up in Vancouver in the 1950s, I was often capricious and temperamental, quick to laugh, even quicker to feel despair, prone to flailing my arms, pouting and crying when things didn't go my way, or I thought something was unfair, or I was bullied by my sisters.
I don't paint, and I can't draw, but I see things, I think, quite well, and I love being able to freeze things with the camera, particularly the children. Then I discovered with the camera that you can tell a whole story with just freezing a moment in reality. I find it a very good way, a very satisfying feeling.
I tried during the 1974 campaign to show my husband not as the aloof intellectual people think he is, but the warm, passionate man I know. But the day after the election - after I'd worked so hard - I was put back on the shelf. I was devastated.
I strongly believe that privacy is one of the biggest luxuries one can have in life - to have your own private world and not be invaded by the outside.
I am not a weirdo, a wacko, or an eccentric for wanting to do good, honest work on a day-to-day basis.
I don't care about the respect of the press or the public or anybody. Whose respect every day I'm trying to garner is the respect of my children and my grandchildren and my friends, the people I work with.
I can only ask people to be tolerant of the fact that the... pressures of wives of politicians is very, very strong.
Who am I - Canada's Rodney Dangerfield? I get no respect.
I don't think I'm marriage material, to tell you the truth. I'd be a bad choice. But I'd be darling at being a girlfriend.
I didn't even like Mick Jagger.
Bad choices make good stories.
I have worked hard to become happy. It was a real struggle.
Pierre was an extraordinary teacher - he really was one of the best, and he raised the boys so, so well: to have a global view, to have compassion, to be humanitarians, to really be concerned about alleviating suffering.
I'm an old hippie who lives in the now. I seldom look forward, but we have to.
I live with being bipolar, but it doesn't define me anymore.
I was a quicksilver girl who saw every leaf on every tree. For me, there was no middle ground between sinking and flying, and once I was into my early adult years, my roller coaster got wilder and faster: I seemed to rise and fall with the same reckless velocity.
I certainly don't have all the answers, but I know this to be true: we have a great degree of control over what happens to us in the last third of our lives.
I'm pretty much an out-front, straightforward chick, and I get a bit confused by expectations.
I have learned one thing: the only thing you can change about your husband is the way he dresses.
Simply put, women should prepare in their 50s for the rest of their lives.
I know what it's like to feel marginalized and defeated and humiliated by suffering from a mental illness.
I know it will blow minds, but I plan on finding an apartment in New York. I'll commute to Ottawa, so I can still be Pierre Trudeau's wife and the mother of our three children - but I also want to be a working photographer.
I've never been one to celebrate anniversaries. — © Margaret Trudeau
I've never been one to celebrate anniversaries.
I'm no political pundit.
The label 'wife of the prime minister' is like a giant signboard pointing at my head from a Monty Python sketch. But I am not Mrs. Prime Minister. I'm a human being.
I have five of the most beautiful children.
The main thing that triggered my depression was my isolation that was imposed on me by becoming the wife of the prime minister, and leaving my home, my family. I was young, very young, and very naive and very hopeful and enthusiastic about my wonderful new life, but it was the loneliness and the lack of being able to properly relate to people.
I love the life I've had.
You can't fix yourself out of a mental health issue. You can't wake up and say, 'Today I'm not being depressed!' It's a process to get well, but there is recovery.
I remember, after my first postpartum depression, I didn't know what had happened to me. I was stuck in this gray depression where I just wanted to retreat and pull the covers over my head and weep. My mother and I, we went to a psychiatrist, and he just patted me on the head and told me I had baby blues, which was not helpful, obviously.
I had no idea there was such a thin line between sanity and insanity. I got pushed right to the edge by tragedy in my life, and I couldn't stand up; I couldn't recover.
I turned 65 and thought, 'Oh my God, I'm a senior. How did this happen?'
Politics is an ugly and thankless role. — © Margaret Trudeau
Politics is an ugly and thankless role.
Suddenly I turned 65 and realized, 'Oh my goodness, I'm old.' I think it was when I got into the movie theatres cheaper.
My honesty about mental illness has helped open a door for real conversation, and I think Justin wants to continue that conversation. He has put no restrictions on me. His father couldn't. Why should he try?
For me, because I'm a mental health advocate, I want everyone to be the healthiest they can be.
I have studied Freud and that kind of thing. I just never thought I would need it.
I just want to find my individuality.
Our youth-oriented society does not have a clearly defined place for the older woman.
Don't feel badly when you take off work to go for a run, to go for a walk; don't feel badly to take time to play with your children, to be part of their lives. Work is important, but you can't work at your best unless you're a whole person.
We can choose to wake up and grumble all day and be bitter and angry and judge others and find satisfaction in others doing bad instead of good. Or we can we wake up with optimism and love and say, 'Just what is this beautiful day going to bring me?'
I don't think Pierre Trudeau knew how to be a husband. I couldn't stay in that marriage.
When you're mentally ill, sometimes you're so self-involved that you forget how much you're hurting all the people around you who love you so much, because you don't understand that you've got to get help.
At 65, most of us still have a lot to give and a lot to contribute.
I feel very confident and positive about my life.
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