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Robert Menzies Quotes
1894–1978 Australia
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies KT, AK, CH, PC, QC, FAA, FRS (20 December 1894 – 15 May 1978) was an Australian politician, founder of the Australian Liberal Party, and Australia's 12th and longest serving Prime Minister. Menzies' tenure as Prime Minister saw Australia's involvement in the Second World War, Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as opening trade relations with Japan in 1953 and defining Australia's place in the Cold War era.
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23 quotes
What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north.
Policy speech (1939)
I would like to thank all those present—and those who are no longer present.
I am British to the bootstraps!
Speech at a White House luncheon (1964)
One thing about bureaucrats is that they never swallow their young. Leave them alone and you'll find them increasing every year.
At a Liberal Party rally in Melbourne (1946)
"It's not a crown, it's an old felt hat!"
I have had many strange and some bitter experiences in my political life.
Our slogan is Australia Unlimited, and we pronounce it with confidence.
I owe my tolerable health to having selected my parents well.
To seek to abolish history is the ambition of a fool. For a land without history is a barren island in an uncharted sea. To tear up the roots is to destroy the tree.
Melbourne Scots - 'Father and Son' Night address (1968)
'I pay my taxes', says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.
There is hardly a section of the community that doesn't in one breath protest undying hostility to Government interference and, in the next breath, pray for it.
[O]ne of the consequences of the inevitable pragmatisms of politics is that statesmen cannot afford the luxury of accepting theories as facts.
Twice in this century men have died by the millions, largely because in what might have been the golden age of history men have learned to live with machines and have forgotten how to live with one another.
The most fundamental task in front of us is to educate a new generation, not for mere money-making or to comply with the law, but for an enlightened citizenship based upon honest thinking and human understanding.
The best epitaph for a true democrat will not be, "I tickled people's ears, I got their votes, I spent their money", but, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."
At last we are in England. Our journey to Mecca has ended and our minds abandoned to those reflections which can so strangely (unless you remember our traditions and our upbringing) move the souls of those who go "home" to a land they have never seen.
Menzies: If I were the Archangel Gabriel, you wouldn't be in my constituency.
A national election campaign is not a conflict of self-interest, with the prize going to the highest bidder. It is an occasion for a re-statement of faith, a renewal of zeal, and a clear vision of the future.
The real and active Communists in Australia present us with our immediate problem — not the woolly-headed dupes, not the people who are pushed to the front in order to present a respectable appearance, but the real and active Communists.
There has grown up a legend that the whole [Petrov] affair was a cleverly timed political scheme. This charge was made by Dr Evatt, the Leader of the Opposition, time after time, and was shown to be false time after time. But, as so frequently happens in life, the picturesque slander outlives the sober answer.
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