Most Australian Sayings

#1. Money is tighter now, with the advertising dollar spread a lot more thinly across a whole range of media because of the Internet. It means the television networks have less power to produce shows, and TV is where most Australian actors make their money.

Grant Bowler

#2. I was the most Australian child ever in the world, even though my home was in Africa.

Mem Fox

#3. I seem to have a soft spot in my heart for Australia and Australian actors. After having worked with one in 'Cinderella' and a multitude of them in 'Cats,' I've wanted the opportunity to actually perform 'down under.'

Lea Salonga

#4. I like the story about me being pregnant. It was in some Australian magazine, on the front page! I was like, 'Wow, that's just [insane].' And it's not even ironic. I don't even think the article [tried to justify it]; it was just a headline. The article was just like, nothing.

Robert Pattinson

#5. As you know, the Australian Labour Party is committed to turning the country into a republic. We've not stipulated a timeline for doing that. We are sensitive to the other priorities we've got as a nation and in the world, but in time the country will head in that direction.

Kevin Rudd

#6. Winning the world championship in '66 was really the pinnacle of the whole thing, because to win a championship with an Australian made engine was a fantastic feather in our cap ...

Jack Brabham

#7. We know that a large majority of the Australian society is extremely comfortable with a multicultural society, that we accept that living in a democracy means having a freedom to practise your religion within the limits of the law.

Tim Soutphommasane

#8. I asked many friends if Australian anti-intellectualism was still a living force and they all told me it was. If you are above average intelligence, hide this embarrassing fact.

George Mikes

#9. More ubiquitous mobile technologies have led to a significant shift from desktops and laptops to the use of mobile tablets. Australian schools are increasingly using apps as they become available to support education.

Susan Mann

#10. It's a huge honour to wear No 7 at Liverpool. I think about the legends: Dalglish, Keegan and that Australian guy.

Luis Suarez

#11. My Mother was a very wild Australian woman. When we were in Africa she could kill a snake with one blow from a crow bar, which she kept at the back door.

Mem Fox

#12. It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.

Nick Cave

#13. By transporting Asian species to North America, and North American species to Australia, and Australian species to Africa, and European species to Antarctica, we are, in effect, reassembling the world into one enormous supercontinent - what biologists sometimes refer to as the New Pangaea.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#14. I'm not too fond of the typical Australian activities or culture. I'm not into surfing.

Jens Lekman

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

Paul Keating

#16. The Australian economy is resilient, but business and consumer confidence is fragile.

Julie Bishop

#17. For years I've wanted to write about the Australian countryside, but, like most Australians, I've only got a tourist's knowledge of it. I thought that if I disobeyed that basic rule of writing - write about what you know - I'd write a thin and inauthentic book.

Kate Grenville

#18. Tender Mercies is a very low-budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies was something like five times all of my Australian films combined.

Bruce Beresford

#19. We are all here now and we have to solve our differences and live together as Australians ... I will use the title you have honoured me with to bring the Australian people together ... Together we can build a remarkable country, the envy of the rest of the world.

Lowitja O'Donoghue

#20. There are many possible approaches to Australian garden design, and they all reflect the designer's individual response to gardens. For my part, I love all things most gardeners abhor ... I like the whole thing to be as wild as possible, so that you have to fight your way through in places ...

Edna Walling

#21. I do think Australians as a rule have a very good sensibility to them, and I think most people, if they were given the option, wouldn't choose to rip off a filmmaker or an artist - I don't think its part of the Australian psyche.

John Polson

#22. I don't see why, if you look at how the Australian culture and psyche is, that we can't be amongst the most generous, from the grassroots up, nations in the world.

Andrew Forrest

#23. When you arrive in L.A. as an Englishman, you might as well be on the moon. People just don't understand you if you speak too fast, and most people there think you're Australian. Ordering was incredibly complicated. I was speechless.

Ben Chaplin

#24. Making jokes is about the most wrong and stupid thing a bemused, middle-aged, white heterosexual Anglo Saxon sort of Celt Australian male can do these days.

Michael Leunig

#25. Dr Piper smiled hugely like a big cherub. 'Of course it's wonderful. The whole world is wonderful. Everything is made to fit into its place. And you and Kirsty are the most wonderful of all. Just look at the way you are made.

Colin Thiele

#26. I've played Beckett. I put on in the 1950s the first Australian production of 'Waiting for Godot.' I played Estragon. The most interesting conversation I've had about Beckett was with a Dublin taxi driver.

Barry Humphries

#27. Australian History:
... does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies.

Mark Twain

#28. The Australian Open attracts one of the most competitive line-ups in the world and I'm looking forward to putting the heat on some of my old on-court rivals.

Mark Philippoussis

#29. I've known white Australian girls from wealthy families who were sent to posh private schools, who knew all of that stuff, and I think would recognise much in Jefferson's book. What I related to most strongly was the sexism and misogyny Margo Jefferson had to battle.

Justine Larbalestier

#30. The Family of Man is more than three billion strong. It lives in more than one hundred nations. Most of its members are not white. Most of them are not Christians. Most of them know nothing about free enterprise, or due process of law or the Australian ballot.

John F. Kennedy

#31. I'm black and Cuban, Australian and Irish, and like most people in America, I'm someone whose roots come from somewhere else. I'm a mixed race, first-generation American.

Soledad O'Brien

#32. The 2007 Labor campaign was the most presidential in Australian history, with a slogan - Kevin07 - exceeded in its banality only by its success.

Richard Flanagan

#33. 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

#34. The Australian people expect the Government to govern, they don't expect it to make excuses.

Tony Abbott

#35. Australian Aborigines say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.

Robert Moss

#36. I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

Jared Harris

#37. It's unfortunate, I've been the victim of some Australian press.

Cameron Van Der Burgh

#38. This is not a book about Australia. No, it's about somewhere entirely different which happens to be, here and there, a bit ... Australian. Still ... no worries, right?

Terry Pratchett

#39. For me, even just being English was a whole sort of experience in as much as I'm Australian.

Radha Mitchell

#40. There is something about the Australian psyche that seems to like films that are slightly offbeat.

Nick Park

#41. Eucalyptus. Murray Bail. Someone told me that this was a great novel so I bought it, but then I discovered that it was great Australian novel so I put it away. I find it difficult to get to grips with Australian novels. Difficult, but not impossible.

Susan Hill

#42. To the north the Indonesian Air Force strafed Australian ships that were attempting to repel refugees from Indonesia and Timor and Papua. In

James Bradley

#43. None of the serious maritime incidents I had to deal with as transport minister off the pristine Queensland or Western Australian coastline involved an Australian flagged and crewed vessel.

Anthony Albanese

#44. The Australian fans are really friendly and personable; the sense of humour is a lot less dry than the English.

Tom Hopper

#45. I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.

Peter Porter

#46. My current fear is that the message being sent by the level of vitriol surrounding Gillard's flawed leadership (but tell me whose wasn't flawed) is being heard by Australian women and girls loud and clear. And the message is: 'Don't aspire to high office,sweetheart, because we'll flay you alive.'

Jane Caro

#47. The traditional dress of the Australian cricketer is the baggy green cap on the head and the chip on the shoulder. Both are ritualistically assumed

Simon Barnes

#48. I don't know that many Australian actors in Los Angeles, but there are a few of us. I mean, we kind of get together occasionally, but I wouldn't say it's an alliance or anything like that.

Xavier Samuel

#49. We cheer everyone who goes off to Hollywood and tells American stories but telling Australian stories is the greatest thing you can do.

Yahoo Serious

#50. A magpie can be happy or sad: sometimes so happy that he sits on a high, high gum tree and rolls the sunrise around in his throat like beads of pink sunlight; and sometimes so sad that you would expect the tears to drip off his beak.
This magpie was like that.

Colin Thiele

#51. And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

A.B. Paterson

#52. The only time an Australian ever walks is when his car runs out of petrol.

Barry Richards

#53. It is tragic that we have lost one of our nation's finest actors in the prime of his life. Heath Ledger's diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the great performances by an Australian actor.

Kevin Rudd

#54. No diplomatic intervention will ever be made by any government that I lead in support of any individual terrorist's life. We have only indicated in the past, and will maintain a policy in the future, of intervening diplomatically in support of Australian nationals who face capital sentences abroad.

Kevin Rudd

#55. I was 15 years old at university, studying economics and philosophy, and I saw a retrospective of Australian film. They were very raw. 'Picnic at Hanging Rock,' 'Gallipoli;' they were fantastic.

Deborah Kara Unger

#56. I want to make sure we are presenting to the South Australian people a Government that is open and accountable. I want to make sure that we maintain public confidence in government at all levels.

Jay Weatherill

#57. Australia objects to the mini-skirt not on moral but on economic grounds. Australians are no prudes and the lovely, healthy, sporty Australian girls have no reason to hide their knees and thighs. However, the mini-skirt is disastrous for the wool-trade.

George Mikes

#58. My view of the charity world is that compared with business, there is too much talk, way too many meetings and expert panels and blue-ribbon commissions, and not enough action. Or as an Australian friend of mine once opined: "Sometimes you just have to have a go and get on with it, mate!".

John Wood

#59. We believe in the Australian promise; that if you work hard, you won't be left behind.

Wayne Swan

#60. That, my dear, is a mystery to be solved.

Iris Blobel

#61. If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.

Richard Flanagan

#62. I used to have 30 different species of tarantulas, as well as two Australian scorpions that are considered the deadliest in the world. If stung by one, a person would die in 30 minutes. But when I had kids I had to get rid of them, of course. Those were intense!

Jonathan Davis