Paul Keating Quotes

He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Good economics is good politics.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

In the end, rational policy is always good.

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

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

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