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" 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. "

Paul Keating

Life

Place

Stand

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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

" 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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

Paul Keating

Minister

Prime Minister

" In the end, rational policy is always good. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 great curse of modern political life is incrementalism. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

Paul Keating

Think

" One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "