Quotes from Paul Keating

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

Countries get one chance in history of putting into place a savings retirement scheme on the scale of the Australian superannuation system.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Politicians never fade away; they just keep carrying on, you know, their class.

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

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

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

I have long believed, especially after the unprovoked Western attack on Iraq and the ransacking of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, that North Korea would not desist from the full development of its nuclear weapons program, despite threats and sanctions from the West and even from China.

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

The death of Malcolm Fraser underwrites a great loss to Australia. Notwithstanding a controversial prime ministership, in later years he harboured one abiding and important idea about Australia - its need and its right to be a strategically independent country.

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.

My claim has always been that defeatism pervaded the conservative parties in the 1930s and that it was the defining characteristic of Menzies and his first period as prime minister.

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?

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

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.

Truth is, of its essence, liberating, as it is possessed of no contrivance or conceit - that it provides the only genuine basis for progress and that the future can only be found in truth.