Paul Keating Quotes

32 quotes in 538 categories

• He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up
• In the end, the key ingredient for public life is imagination. You imagine something better, you try to bring the people with you.
• We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the…
• One is left with the thought that given the way we now abuse the ocean and abuse the climate that we are heading towards our…
• The Labor Party is not going to profit from having these proven unsuccessful people around who are frightened of their own shadow and won't get…
• If this Government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again, and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically…
• The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience.
• The lesson of the Federation should be that the lesson is over. Australia must have a new idea of itself. We have to strike out…
• I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.
• When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, Victory, and walked off the field.
• In the end, rational policy is always good.
• Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.
• The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.
• The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.
• The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.
• I think the Australian people are very conscientious. During the 1980s and 1990s we proved they will respond conscientiously to necessary reforms. They mightn't like…
• 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…
• I've always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from…
• Well, Australians should speak for the national interests of Australia, and whatever role former Australian prime ministers may have, one of the things you do…
• 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…

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