Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Keating

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

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.

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.

Russia alone has the capacity to obliterate the United States.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany's taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too.

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

Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

In the end, rational policy is always good.

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

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.

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

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.

The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience.

In the end, the key ingredient for public life is imagination. You imagine something better, you try to bring the people with you.

If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours.

He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up

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 done for. We will end up being a third rate economy... a banana republic.

I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.

Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?

We will not adopt the fantastic hypocrisy of modern conservatism which preaches the values of families and communities, while conducting a direct assault on them through reduced wages and conditions and job security.

You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine that these things could be done to us.

Leadership is not about being nice. it's about being right and being strong

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 own iceberg, which is looming on the horizon. It's not visible yet but it certainly exists there and it won't be my generation that has to deal with the fact that the world is not bountiful forever, that the ocean and the atmosphere are not free goods to be abused, that will have to feed these vast populations. That will be your generation.