Paul Keating Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

For John Howard to get to any high moral ground he would have to first climb out of the volcanic hole he's dug for himself over the last decade. You know, it's like one of those deep diamond mined holes in South Africa, you know, they're about a mile underground. He'd have to come a mile up to get to even equilibrium, let alone have any contest in morality with Kevin Rudd.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable... unimaginable... unspeakable.

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

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

The Labor Party is not going to profit from having these proven unsuccessful people around who are frightened of their own shadow and won't get out of bed in the morning unless they've had a focus group report to tell them which side of bed to get out.

[Australian Reserve Bank] Governor MacFarlane said recently when Paul Volcker broke the back of American inflation it's regarded as the policy triumph of the Western world. When I broke the back of Australian inflation they say, "Oh, you're the fellow that put the interest rates up." Am I not the same fellow that gave them the 15 years of good growth and high wealth that came from it?

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

Anybody who achieves what Malcolm Fraser achieved in his life deserves respect as a quite extraordinary Australian.

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

If you are sitting on the title of any block of land in New South Wales you can bet an Aboriginal person at some stage was dispossessed of it.

John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.