Paul Keating Quotes

#1. 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.

Paul Keating

#2. 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?

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#5. In the end, rational policy is always good.

Paul Keating

#6. The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together

Paul Keating

#7. This is a low flying person

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#10. 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.

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#15. The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#17. 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.

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#19. Good economics is good politics.

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#21. No choice we can make as a nation lies between our history and our geography. We can hardly change either of them. They are immutable. The only choice we can make as a nation is the choice about our future.

Paul Keating

#22. 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.

Paul Keating

#23. While frenetic activity, in the end suiting journos; running at the behest of little press secretaries does not pay off

Paul Keating

#24. 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.

Paul Keating

#25. 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.

Paul Keating

#26. 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.

Paul Keating

#27. 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.

Paul Keating

#28. 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.

Paul Keating

#29. He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#33. 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.

Paul Keating

#34. 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

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#39. 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.

Paul Keating

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

Paul Keating

#41. 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.

Paul Keating

#42. A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances, and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the emigrants' ambitions it was built.

Paul Keating