Paul Keating

“I used to say in the cabinet room, 'confidence is not like a can of Popeye spinach - you can't take the top off and swallow it down.' You know, confidence has to be earned.”

“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?”

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

“The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism: a complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.”

“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.”

“I have said before, you don't expect conservative parties to believe in much, but you do expect them to believe in thrift.”

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

“As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me.”

“When we were actually in the Keating reform era, the Business Council was of no help.”

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

“The essence of leadership is essentially taking the responsibility of trying to interpret the future to the present.”

“In the end, rational policy is always good.”

“What we have to do is make our way in Asia ourselves with an independent foreign policy. Our future is basically in the region around us in South East Asia.”

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

“You get one chance to do something about native title. You get perhaps one chance in your life to do something about a republic. You get one chance, your chance, to build a piece of the political architecture in the Pacific. I wasn't going to give those up.”

“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.”

“What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship, and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity.”

“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.”

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

“The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.”