ROBERT MENZIES

It is a simple but sometimes forgotten truth that the greatest enemy to present joy and high hopes is the cultivation of retrospective bitterness.

The long-established and noble rule of Law, one of the greatest products of the character and tradition of British history, has suffered a deadly blow. Blackmail has become respectable.

I am one of the few men honest enough to say they do not understand women.

Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.

Considering the company I keep in this place, that is hardly surprising.

A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful money-maker and never contribute to his country anything more than a horrible example.

In all my life I have treated the press with marked contempt and had remarkable success.

Individual enterprise must drive us forward. That does not mean we are to return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. The functions of the State will be much more than merely keeping the ring within which the competitors will fight. Our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

The great vice of democracy --- a vice which is exacting a bitter retribution from it at this moment - is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else's wealth and somebody else's effort on which we could thrive.

In a war, as indeed at most times, we become the ready victims of phrases.

National patriotism, in other words, inevitably springs from the instinct to defend and preserve our own homes.

The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole.

I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organized masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race.

Our greatest political disease -- the disease of thinking that the community is divided into the relatively rich and the relatively idle, and the laborious poor, and that every social and political controversy can be resolved into the question: What side are you on?

Remember two things. One is never to forget posterity when devising a policy. The other is never to think of posterity when making a speech.

Men of genius are not be analyzed by commonplace rules.

Immigrants themselves are largely responsible for any ill-feeling towards them, because they frequently contribute to prejudice and misunderstanding through their unawareness of Australian customs and standards.

If I were the Archangel Gabriel, madam, I’m afraid you would not be in my constituency.

The thing I want most in an ambassador is that when he picks up the phone, you'll take the call.

The Prime Minister of this country should be 100 percent efficient at all time.

Thinking ahead, what really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle-class - the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones.

One thing about bureaucrats is that they never swallow their young. Leave them alone and you'll find them increasing every year.

My headmaster chastised me with a diabolical instrument a leather strap tacked to a piece of wood but he taught me with such villainous success that I am now Prime Minister.

One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions.

More good things in life are lost by indifference than ever were lost by active hostility.