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" 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. "

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" I have long believed, especially after the unprovoked Western attack on Iraq and the ransacking of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, that North Korea would not desist from the full development of its nuclear weapons program, despite threats and sanctions from the West and even from China. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Politicians come in three varieties: straight men, fixers, and maddies. "

" 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. "

" The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism: a complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism. "

" 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 great curse of modern political life is incrementalism. "

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

" 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 them but they'll accept them. But reforms have to be presented in a digestible format. "

" 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. "

" The essence of leadership is essentially taking the responsibility of trying to interpret the future to the present. "

" Well, I think that - I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage. "

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

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

" Truth is, of its essence, liberating, as it is possessed of no contrivance or conceit - that it provides the only genuine basis for progress and that the future can only be found in truth. "

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

" Politicians never fade away; they just keep carrying on, you know, their class. "

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

" The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century. "

" You get one chance to do something about native title. You get perhaps one chance in your life to do something about a republic. You get one chance, your chance, to build a piece of the political architecture in the Pacific. I wasn't going to give those up. "