Top 87 Quotes & Sayings by Bob Hawke

If the Australian Government were to associate itself with the United States attack on Iraq, which was not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, then we'd put this country at risk.

Is there some reason why the quality of people going into the parliament is not as high? I don't know the complete answer, but I think - in fact, I'm sure - that part of it is the increasing intrusiveness of the media - the general media and social media - into the private lives of politicians and their families.

Australia can no longer afford to go down the path of confrontation and fragmentation which has embittered and disfigured so many aspects of the national life.

I have a deep love for the Chinese people.

The greatest stain upon this great Australian nation's character, without any question, is the great gaps that exist between our Aboriginal brothers and sisters in terms of their health, their education, their living conditions, their incarceration rates and life expectancy. It's a great stain.

They've been irrelevant to me, the print media, because my link does not depend upon the menial minds of the scribblers in Canberra or anywhere else.

None of us can be sure of how long we will live. Because this is so, I think you should try not to think too much about dying but think about all the nice things that make life so precious to us all.

There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn't have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement.

I had ministers who were just outstandingly good.

My experience is that the Australian people rarely get it wrong - they will vote for a united party that is able to look after their interests and the national interest.

I believed in the goodness of the Australian people; I believed they did not want to be attacking each other, and from those thoughts, I got the idea of Reconciliation in the campaign slogan and of turning this into something practical by calling a summit to bring representatives of all sections of society together, from the wealthiest to the poor.

From that first wage case in 1958, I had, pretty much, rock star status.

I think it is just stupid economics for a government to approach economic management from a strand of thinking regarding unions as enemies.

We are building together a nation in which there are no second-class Australians.

One fundamental issue which Trump did take advantage of was the increasing disparities of income in the United States. So many people saw the rich getting richer and it not being spread around. It's affecting European politics, too, now.

I believe the Australian people have an affection for the Queen, and so they should have.

I could never afford to be in a position where I could do something stupid, so I gave up drinking.

When I was Prime Minister, it's right - we had a close relationship - but that did not prevent me, when I believed the United States position was wrong, arguing against them.

If elected, Bill Shorten and his team would hit the ground running, implementing Labor's plans and setting the nation up for a stronger economic future.

The things which are most important don't always scream the loudest.

Poor quality of representatives... is not a purely Australian phenomenon - it's a worldwide phenomenon.

Unless and until something concrete is done about addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue you won't get a real start on the war against terrorism.

I felt completely ready to become prime minister. I came to office better equipped, in terms of knowledge of economics and of the Australian economy, than anyone before me, or since, I would say.

My point was that the war was intrinsically wrong, and as a result of our participation we haven't improved Australia's security but created a greater danger at home and abroad.

The level of journalism in this country is just so pathetically poor, and I've, in a sense, gone over the top of them, which they don't like.

George Bush Junior [George W Bush] was a religious fanatic, and Tony Blair wasn't far behind in a way.

I can't speak with authority about Emeka Anyaoku. I just didn't know him that well.

[Malcolm Fraser] went straight from Melbourne Grammar to Oxford. And he would have been a very lonely person, and I think he probably met a lot of black students there who were also probably lonely. I think he formed friendships with them, which established his judgement about the question of colour. That’s my theory. I don’t know whether it’s right or not, but that’s what I always respected about Malcolm. He was absolutely, totally impeccable on the question of race and colour.

I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, "Come up to Vancouver", and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, "I think it could work." I said, "Will you help us?" He said, "Yes." So, I set aside senior people in our treasury and they worked with Wolfensohn and the investment sanctions were applied. And that's what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.

I really had very little to do with Pierre Trudeau. He was off the scene very soon.

I find a fence a very uncomfortable place to squat my bottom.

It was very much an Australian/New Zealand initiative to have a nuclear free South Pacific. And the Americans were very apprehensive about this. So, I explained to them that, as far as I was concerned, this didn't involve any diminution in our commitment to the ANZUS relationship. But David Lange took it further and he barred visits of US nuclear warships to New Zealand.

While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.

It had things that it could do and which I thought were worthwhile: one would be South Africa, of course. And, as I said, I assumed a leadership role within the Commonwealth on that.

I had a good personal relationship with Lee Kuan Yew and I used him, in the sense, that he... He made a statement in 1980, and he said in that statement that, "If Australia keeps going the way it is, it will finish up the poor, white trash of Asia." And he was right, because we were just going backwards.

We were great mates [with Rajiv Gandhi]: very, very, very close friends. In fact, on my visit to India as Prime Minister, we were going to his home for dinner. There were two aspects I remember: one is him saying how he had trouble with his security people, because they insisted he wears a vest. He said it was very uncomfortable and he often took it off, but of course, in the end, it wouldn't have mattered if he'd been wearing three vests - he would have been gone.

Institutions do live on their history.

[ Rajiv Gandhi] was very reflective and rueful and regretful about the fact that his children's education...He wanted them to get educated outside of India, but he said to me the only place that he found where they would be safe was in Russia, and he didn't really want them to be educated there! So, I said, "Well, send them to Australia. I'll look after them." And my security bloke went absolutely bloody bananas, and I said, "We'll look after them." But, in the end, he didn't send them.

We will not allow to become a political issue in this country the question of Asianisation.

The world will not wait for us.

I just loved him and he loved me... He was a most humble man, the most decent man I've ever met in my life and he always looked for the best in people to find positives and he said something to me that always remained with me. He said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me.

The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.

I led the fight here against apartheid as President of the ACTU, including particularly the Springbok tour in 1971. And that led to the banning of the South African cricket tour which had been scheduled - that was something that I sorted out with Sir Donald Bradman. That was interesting.

I assumed the leadership within the Commonwealth for the fight against apartheid. I was very much assisted by Brian Mulroney, the Prime Minister of Canada, [and] Rajiv Gandhi, when he became the Prime Minister of India. And there were trade sanctions.

I wrote a letter to our Australian newspaper about three weeks before the invasion and I said, "Osama bin Laden must be on his knees morning and night praying to Allah that the Americans will invade." And, of course, he was, because nothing more advanced his cause - the cause of terrorism - than the invasion of Iraq. It was an absurdity.

We [ with Brian Mulroney and Rajiv Gandhi] went to the meeting in Canada [the 1987 Vancouver CHOGM] and I said to them there that sanctions weren't working; they were just being busted. And it did seem to me that one way that we could bring the apartheid regime down would be if we did mount an effective investment sanction.

Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable. Nor will they perceive the distribution of wealth and resources between nations to be unalterably ordained by heaven and incapable of drastic rearrangement by the less than gentle manipulation of man.

Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.

The personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]... For instance, once she goes - if she's ever going to die, it seems to be questionable - if Charles [of Wales] were there, whether there'd be the same sort of cement is very questionable, I think.

It was the South African Government that has introduced politics into sport by decreeing politically that no non-white person will represent their country. They introduced politics into sport." And Don [Bradman] was a very shrewd old bloke, and he looked at me for about thirty seconds and then he said, "Bob, I've got no answer to that." And that was it.

Do you know why I have credibility? Because I don't exude morality.

By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty.

In sum, the truth is that we luxuriate in the comfortable assertion that women enjoy equality. We have salved our consciences by eliminating the more obvious discriminations like unequal rates of pay for work of equal value. But, in fact, we have not eliminated the inheritance of the millennia that women are lesser beings, an inheritance which still manifests itself in a whole range of prejudice and other forms of discrimination.

I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.

In fact, soon after that [South African sanctions], I was going on an official visit to the UK and Margaret Thatcher instructed every minister to clear the decks of any outstanding matters between us - Australia and the Brits. And she went out of her way to make sure that that was as successful a visit as it possibly could be.

[John Howard] led the Government. They had the numbers, and just basically automatically went along with the Americans.

All the arguments there are against Malcolm [Turnbull] - and there are many - the one thing in which he is impeccable and why I would support him in this is that he has an absolutely impeccable record on the question of colour and race. People often wondered why. What I see as a possible explanation is [that] he came from a very wealthy family - a 'squattocracy' - and he had private education at home and then he went to boarding school at Melbourne Grammar School, one of those lead schools in Australia.

The essence of power is the knowledge that what you do is going to have an effect not just an immediate but perhaps a lifelong effect on the happiness and wellbeing of millions of people and so I think the essence of power is to be conscious of what it can mean for others.

I hated [Robert Mugabe]. He's one of the worst human beings I've ever met. He treated black and white with equal contempt. He was a horrible human being.

It was Indira Gandhi who very much lined up with the Russians. And she was, you know, within the Commonwealth, basically one out on that. The first meeting in 1983 was held in India and I was very off put by her. I just couldn't abide her, basically.