Paul Keating Quotes
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If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours.
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Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable... unimaginable... unspeakable.
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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.
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He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up
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The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Politicians come in three varieties: straight men, fixers, and maddies.
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I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage.
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In the end, the key ingredient for public life is imagination. You imagine something better, you try to bring the people with you.
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I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.
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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.
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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.
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The lesson of the Federation should be that the lesson is over. Australia must have a new idea of itself. We have to strike out in a new direction, in a new way, armed with our own self-regard, our own confidence and fully appreciating our own uniqueness. All other roads will lead us into the shadow of great powers.
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You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.
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Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?
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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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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.
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Leadership is not about being nice. it's about being right and being strong
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The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.
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In the end it's the big picture which changes nations and whatever our opponents may say, Australia's changed inexorably for good, for the better.
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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?