[Richard Bedford Bennett] was the richest Prime Minister and the only millionaire to hold office before Pierre Trudeau. His money obviously colored his thinking -- colored it true blue -- but he did not consider it a political drawback. No leader, he said, could serve the public properly if he was constantly looking over his shoulder at the shadow of debts. This theory is now widely accepted in the United States where it has become practically impossible for a non-millionaire to run for high office without selling pieces of himself like a prize-fighter. Yet the public still suspects a self-made millionaire like Lyndon Johnson while revering the much-richer John F. Kennedy, who got it all from his father. Gordon Donaldson
About This Quote

In 1969, Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett said: "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." In the US, the public often takes a different approach to wealth. The public looks at wealth as a liability and sometimes holds it against a person for being rich. In the above quote from the Canadian politician, he explains that he is proud of his success and what it has done for him, but it does not make him a better man. Instead, he prefers the idea that if he continues to struggle, then he can rise above his circumstances and be a better person.

Source: Eighteen Men: The Prime Ministers Of Canada

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More Quotes By Gordon Donaldson
  1. Americans, though apparently impressed by ghastly sentimentality and outrageous hypocrisy, are by nature much more politically cynical than Canadians. In their longer history they have had much more to be cynical about. They demand a vulgar show, enjoy it, guffaw, and forget it the next...
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  3. Other nations merely change governments as a lady changes dancing partners: Canada contrives to fall in a dead faint every time the music stops.
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