Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Good economics is good politics.
In the end, rational policy is always good.
He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up
The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.
I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage.
Russia alone has the capacity to obliterate the United States.
One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.
If you can't imagine it, you sure as hell are never going to see it.
I think Australia has to be a country which has the 'Welcome' sign out.
Politicians come in three varieties: straight men, fixers, and maddies.
Leadership is not about being nice. it's about being right and being strong
The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.
Politicians never fade away; they just keep carrying on, you know, their class.
Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?
Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable... unimaginable... unspeakable.
I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.
The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished.
When we were actually in the Keating reform era, the Business Council was of no help.
The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience.
As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me.
When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field.
If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours.
The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together.
I always believed in burning up the government's political capital, not being Mr Safe Guy, you know?
Well, I think that - I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.
You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.
What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.
The more we view the country through the prism of Aboriginality, the more likely we are to get the angle right.
Anybody who achieves what Malcolm Fraser achieved in his life deserves respect as a quite extraordinary Australian.
The essence of leadership is essentially taking the responsibility of trying to interpret the future to the present.
Well, frenetic activity in the end suiting journos, running at the behest of little press secretaries does not pay off.
Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.
I have said before, you don't expect conservative parties to believe in much, but you do expect them to believe in thrift.
Aboriginal art and culture draws from the land, for Aboriginality and the land are essential to each other and are inseparable.
If one takes pride in one's craft, you won't let a good thing die. Risking it through not pushing hard enough is not a humility.
In the end, the key ingredient for public life is imagination. You imagine something better, you try to bring the people with you.
Countries get one chance in history of putting into place a savings retirement scheme on the scale of the Australian superannuation system.
If you are sitting on the title of any block of land in New South Wales you can bet an Aboriginal person at some stage was dispossessed of it.
One of the inevitable aspects of debates about euthanasia is the reluctance on the part of advocates to confront the essence of what they propose.
The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.
In the end it's the big picture which changes nations and whatever our opponents may say, Australia's changed inexorably for good, for the better.
What we have to do is make our way in Asia ourselves with an independent foreign policy. Our future is basically in the region around us in South East Asia.
The only reward in a public life is public progress. You stand back and say, 'What did I get out of it?' You look around, and the place is better, and that's it.
When one has been touched by the stellar power and ethereal playing of a sublime musician, one is lifted, if only briefly, to a place beyond the realm of the temporal.
John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.
You see, psychologically, Australia must understand it has to live in the region around it. Australia must find its security in Asia; it cannot find its security from Asia.
I used to say in the cabinet room, 'confidence is not like a can of Popeye spinach - you can't take the top off and swallow it down.' You know, confidence has to be earned.
I think the rise of China is one of the great events of all economic and human history, and I think this will be overwhelmingly a positive thing for the region and the world.
You know, in the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
My claim has always been that defeatism pervaded the conservative parties in the 1930s and that it was the defining characteristic of Menzies and his first period as prime minister.