Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Paul Keating

You

Top

Know

Related Quotes:

" I think Australia has to be a country which has the 'Welcome' sign out. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The death of Malcolm Fraser underwrites a great loss to Australia. Notwithstanding a controversial prime ministership, in later years he harboured one abiding and important idea about Australia - its need and its right to be a strategically independent country. "

" Geoffrey Tozer's death is a national tragedy. For the Australian arts and Australian music, losing Tozer is like Canada having lost Glenn Gould, or France, Ginette Neveu. It is a massive cultural loss. The kind of loss people felt when Germany lost Dresden. "

" The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism. "

" As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me. "

Paul Keating

Minister

Prime Minister

" What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists. "

" 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. "

Paul Keating

Policy

Way

" A more worldly and competent foreign and defence policy is by far the preferred first line of defence - rather than the default position of relying on expensive but problematic hardware. "

Paul Keating

Position

First

" The more we view the country through the prism of Aboriginality, the more likely we are to get the angle right. "

Paul Keating

Get

Country

" The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction. "

" At its best, Aboriginal art has been effective in translating an entire culture and the understanding of an entire continent. Indeed, the more we interpret Australia through Aboriginal eyes, through the experience of their long and epic story, the more we allow ourselves to understand the land we share. "

" You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum. "

" I have said before, you don't expect conservative parties to believe in much, but you do expect them to believe in thrift. "

" If you can't imagine it, you sure as hell are never going to see it. "

" The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region. "

" 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. "

" Countries get one chance in history of putting into place a savings retirement scheme on the scale of the Australian superannuation system. "

" I always believed in burning up the government's political capital, not being Mr Safe Guy, you know? "

" Aboriginal art and culture draws from the land, for Aboriginality and the land are essential to each other and are inseparable. "

" 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. "

" What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship, and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity. "

" 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. "

" 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 is speak frankly about the country as you see the country's best interests, you know? "

" The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When we were actually in the Keating reform era, the Business Council was of no help. "