Top 100 Turnbull Quotes
#1. Sure, Malcolm Turnbull is less anti-science and anti-culture than [Tony] Abbott, but low bar, and there's not a lot to show for it beyond rhetoric.
Justine Larbalestier
#2. In your telephone call, you [Malcolm Turnbull]said that neither you nor the Cabinet would be supporting my nomination. When I asked the reasons for this, you said that neither you nor the Cabinet has the view that I had the qualifications for the position [of UN's secretary-general].
Kevin Rudd
#3. We have a strong and credible broadband policy because the man who has devised it, the man who will implement it virtually invented the Internet in this country. Thank you so much, Malcolm Turnbull.
Tony Abbott
#4. The [Maicolm] Turnbull government's position on this is perfectly clear. We believe that there should be a plebiscite so that all Australians can have their say, and that is what Australians want.
George Brandis
#5. The issue isn't gun control but state control
obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties.
George Jonas
#6. I want to be taken to a madhouse," said Turnbull distinctly, giving the direction with a sort of precision. "I want to go back to exactly the same lunatic asylum from which I came." "Why?" asked the unknown. "Because I want a little sane and wholesome society," answered Turnbull.
G.K. Chesterton
#7. Wicca offered real, not pretended, means for the individual to express the art, beauty, and reality of ritual, including magic, in the here and now.
Paul Turnbull
Arin Murphy-Hiscock
#8. The new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, while a vast improvement on his predecessor is not doing much, if anything, to slow that process done.
Justine Larbalestier
#9. Gone are the days when your indiscretions at university were recorded in a roneoed college newsletter of which there is only one copy left tucked in a filing cabinet at the back of a library. Today that same college newsletter is online, accessible by the whole world now and forever.
Malcolm Turnbull
#10. The question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, let alone of belief. The issue is simply one of risk management.
Malcolm Turnbull
#11. Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.
Herbert Turnbull
#12. Mitt Romney speaking to a $50,000-a-plate Republican fundraiser says he doesn't have to worry about the 47 per cent of Americans who don't pay tax. He was not counting on the smart phone recording his speech and then posting it on YouTube.
Malcolm Turnbull
#13. There is a largeness about mathematics that transcends race and time; mathematics may humbly help in the market-place, but it also reaches to the stars.
Robert Turnbull
#14. It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people, 'There are no easy solutions here.'
Malcolm Turnbull
#15. The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#16. Governments enjoying surpluses have a very strong temptation to splash money around, and while tax cuts are always appealing, cutting taxes at the top of a boom runs the real risk of creating a structural deficit when the boom subsides.
Malcolm Turnbull
#17. It is unmanly. It is not some expression of macho virtue. It is the absolute antithesis of this. Real men don't bully women and children. Respect for women ... is so important.
Malcolm Turnbull
#18. You must learn to drink the cup of life as it comes ... without stirring it up from the bottom. That's where the bitter dregs are!
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#19. I've been around in public life for a long time. I think people know what I stand for. They know that I have strong convictions, committed principles and I'm prepared to stand up for them.
Malcolm Turnbull
#20. Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#21. Design acknowledges change. Its meaning encompasses change in our times. To design is to 'create order and to function according to a plan.' The notion of change and design move along the same path.
Sara Little Turnbull
#22. Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street, the battlers, by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them, they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.
Malcolm Turnbull
#23. The biggest review of taxation ever undertaken in this country, is now dead in the water.
Malcolm Turnbull
#24. There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#25. Nobody looks at opinion polls with more attention than politicians, but of course you've got to remember that a single poll is a snapshot in time.
Malcolm Turnbull
#26. When politicians offer you something for nothing, or something that sounds too good to be true, it's always worth taking a careful second look.
Malcolm Turnbull
#27. Beautiful light is born of a contrast to darkness ...
Ross Turnbull
#28. The most effective check and balance on government has been an independent press which maintains its credibility by ensuring that its criticism is balanced and based on fact - based indeed on solid journalistic work.
Malcolm Turnbull
#29. You cannot keep on saying oh, you know, talking about disrespecting women as just being politically correct or it's not a big deal or brushing things off. You've got to be aware of it.
Malcolm Turnbull
#30. Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect, indifference, cruelty or adultery, to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief.
Malcolm Turnbull
#31. The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. ... where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings? (pp.281-82)
Sarah Turnbull
#32. China and India will take the global leadership on climate change: they are suffering for it.
Malcolm Turnbull
#33. The greatest mathematics has the simplicity and inevitableness of supreme poetry and music, standing on the borderland of all that is wonderful in Science, and all that is beautiful in Art.
Robert Turnbull
#34. It's not a 24-hour news cycle, it's a 60-second news cycle now, it's instantaneous. It has never been easier to get away with telling lies. It has never been easier to get away with the glib one liner.
Malcolm Turnbull
#35. If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he's the hell of a diplomat.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#36. What you've got to do is recognize that you don't control everything for a start, you've got to play the cards you're dealt, the hand of cards you're dealt, as best you can, and that's what I always seek to do.
Malcolm Turnbull
#37. The proliferation of outlets that digital technology has enabled has itself contributed to the changing nature of what we regard as 'news' and the way in which many citizens perceive politics.
Malcolm Turnbull
#38. Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation! ... Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It's the most loquacious of all. You really can't get a word in edgeways.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#39. [T]he great end of education ... is to persuade and to inspire the sincere love of virtue.
George Turnbull
#40. Study after study has demonstrated that people are better off financially, healthier, happier if they are married, and indeed, I repeat, if they are formally married as opposed to simply living together.
Malcolm Turnbull
#41. Climate change is a global problem. The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues, truly catastrophic consequences are likely to ensue from rising sea levels, to reduced water availability, to more heat waves and fires.
Malcolm Turnbull
#42. Are not the gays who seek the right to marry, to formalise their commitment to each other, holding up a mirror to heterosexuals who are marrying less frequently and divorcing more often?
Malcolm Turnbull
#43. It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.
Sarah Turnbull
#44. I think we foreshorten our own viewpoint if we consider any state of mind, or society, or government as final. Growth and change! We can't get away from them.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#45. I try to talk about policy issues intelligently, I try very hard to avoid thought bubbles. I make sure my speeches are well researched and footnoted. I make sure I am not talking through my hat.
Malcolm Turnbull
#46. The Liberal Party is and always has been an amalgam between the conservative and the liberal with a small L traditions. And so from time to time people will see it emphasising one more than the other. I think it is genuinely an amalgam between the two.
Malcolm Turnbull
#47. The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly, if that's the best job you can get in terms of money, that's too bad, you know. Because frankly, it's not well paid, everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.
Malcolm Turnbull
#48. In terms of our region, what we need to ensure is that the rise of China [is] conducted in a manner that does not disturb the security and the relative harmony of the region upon which China's prosperity depends. Now - now, that requires careful diplomacy, it requires balancing.
Malcolm Turnbull
#49. Greece is an extreme case: a country where both the level of spending and the level of taxation were unsustainable!
Malcolm Turnbull
#50. Those who condemn gay marriage, yet are silent or indifferent to the breakdown of marriage and divorce, are, in my view, missing the real issue.
Malcolm Turnbull
#51. We need to recognise that the whole edifice of our fifth estate, of our journalism, has been built on a foundation of newspaper journalism and that that foundation is crumbling. The management of the media companies will deny that the end is nigh. I hope they are right.
Malcolm Turnbull
#52. I don't find myself in moral turmoil. I'm not given to turmoil of any kind.
Malcolm Turnbull
#53. Beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.
Ross Turnbull
#54. French elegance lies in the balance of romance and restraint.
Sarah Turnbull
#55. A union mount is a mount that allows several filesystems to be mounted at one time but appear to be one filesystem. The union mount overlays the filesystems on top of one another so that the resulting filesystem may contain files and subdirectories from any or all of the underlying filesystems.
James Turnbull
#56. Look at countries like China, they are determined to dominate all clean technology areas, putting lots of money into wind, solar, electric vehicles and battery storage. America's political impotence, caused by their terrible partisanship, will see them left behind.
Malcolm Turnbull
#57. All Australians understand that high-quality, reliable and affordable broadband is a critical part of the infrastructure our nation needs to prosper in coming years.
Malcolm Turnbull
#58. May your colonies be healthy and plentiful May your supers be overflowing And may your swarms always be someone else's bees!
Bill Turnbull
#60. I do not believe we can effectively move Australia to a lower emission economy, which is what we need to do if we're going to make a contribution to a global reduction in greenhouse gases, without putting a price on carbon.
Malcolm Turnbull
#61. [On religion:] Wasn't it invented by man for a kind of solace? It's as though he had said, 'I'll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,' and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#62. The way to lose weight is to eat less, so I ate a lot less for a month and lost a lot of weight pretty quickly.
Malcolm Turnbull
#63. Do the bishops seriously imagine that legalising gay marriage will result in thousands of parties to heterosexual marriages suddenly deciding to get divorced so they can marry a person of the same sex?
Malcolm Turnbull
#64. When a man meets catastrophe on the road, he looks in his purse, but a woman looks in her mirror.
Margaret Turnbull
#65. Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted.
Malcolm Turnbull
#66. I love radio - its immediacy and especially its intimacy ... it is part of your life, whispering into your ear. You can't see it, but equally importantly it can't see you.
Malcolm Turnbull
#67. Everyone's got different views. I think you're better off staying within the party and prosecuting those views than stepping out of it.
Malcolm Turnbull
#68. People invest in companies in order to get a share of the profit that company will make. If the Government increases its share of the profits, potential profits, at the expense of the owners of the company, the shareholders, then that makes investment in that company less attractive.
Malcolm Turnbull
#69. Government will not nominate the former Labor prime minister [Kevin Rudd] to be the UN's next secretary-general.
Malcolm Turnbull
#70. We are already experiencing the symptoms of climate change, especially with a hotter and drier climate in southern Australia - the rush to construct desalination plants is an expensive testament to that.
Malcolm Turnbull
#71. In economics, one of the most important concepts is 'opportunity cost' - the idea that once you spend your money on something, you can't spend it again on something else.
Malcolm Turnbull
#72. While our energy efficiency is improving, there is a very high correlation, almost near perfect correlation, between GDP growth, and energy usage.
Malcolm Turnbull
#73. But who knows, some years from now if there's a global emissions trading scheme agreement, as many have hoped for, then I'm sure Australia would be part of it.
Malcolm Turnbull
#74. If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.
Malcolm Turnbull
#75. It's really corny to say, but if you are happily married and have good kids, that is about 98 per cent of what you should be seeking to achieve.
Malcolm Turnbull
#76. The human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life's sorrows.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#77. When the desire ain't on me I don't need help. When it is on me I don't want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn't do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody's.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#78. If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.
Malcolm Turnbull
#79. Honest people, knowledgeable people, really well-informed people can have very different views about what the right measures are on national security.
Malcolm Turnbull
#80. There is a tendency to try to dumb everything down and turn everything into a one-paragraph press release or even less, just a slogan.
Malcolm Turnbull
#81. This is a very tough business, politics. It's easy to get resentful or full of bitterness ... (but) I think hatred hurts the hater more than the hated. So I'm looking back on my time positively.
Malcolm Turnbull
#82. Anyone who thinks it's smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty.
Malcolm Turnbull
#83. Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization-the him night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and best.
Ross Turnbull
#84. Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#85. No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.
Margaret Turnbull
#86. My commitment to the Republican movement was pure and simply patriotism, a love of Australia ... a desire or passion that all of our national symbols should be unequivocally and unambiguously Australian.
Malcolm Turnbull
#87. We learn from every natural disaster. Whether it's a fire or a flood, we learn something from it so we can respond to the next one better.
Malcolm Turnbull
#89. It is our job, as members of parliament, to legislate with an eye to the long term future, to look over the horizon beyond the next election and ensure that as far as we can what we do today will make Australia a better place, a safer place, for future generations to live in.
Malcolm Turnbull
#90. So the proposition that the ideal parents for any child are its biological parents is a statement with which we can all agree in the generality, but which does not apply, for one reason or another, in many particular circumstances.
Malcolm Turnbull
#91. I will go to the next election saying to Australians, vote for me, vote for the Liberal Party, and I will become your PM. So I'm offering myself as the alternative PM - that's one way people describe the Leader of the Opposition - but I'm not in politics for myself to realize a personal ambition.
Malcolm Turnbull
#92. I'm sick of the cover-ups, I'm sick of the lies, and so are the bloody veterans, that come out daily of the department's mouth.
Malcolm Turnbull
#94. A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country. You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can't ever rub it off him.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull
#95. On balance, after weighing the arguments, I believe that the time has come for Australia to create a new sovereign wealth fund.
Malcolm Turnbull
#96. Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement.
Malcolm Turnbull
#97. I believe that politicians should speak the truth all the time. Invariably there will be occasions when you make statements that are factually incorrect due to an error.
Malcolm Turnbull
#99. There's the occasion when politicians will say things that are simply not true or that they make commitments that they have no intention of fulfilling. That is something that I think should not happen. That's a no-no. That's a third rail that you shouldn't touch.
Malcolm Turnbull
#100. I believe politicians should aim to be accurate and truthful in what they say at all times. You can be truthful and inaccurate but what you shouldn't be doing at any time is saying things that are untrue or making commitments that you have no intention of honouring.
Malcolm Turnbull
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top