When one has been touched by the stellar power and ethereal playing of a sublime musician, one is lifted, if only briefly, to a place beyond the realm of the temporal.
The only reward in a public life is public progress. You stand back and say, 'What did I get out of it?' You look around, and the place is better, and that's it.
I think the Australian people are very conscientious. During the 1980s and 1990s we proved they will respond conscientiously to necessary reforms. They mightn't like them but they'll accept them. But reforms have to be presented in a digestible format.
Geoffrey Tozer's death is a national tragedy. For the Australian arts and Australian music, losing Tozer is like Canada having lost Glenn Gould, or France, Ginette Neveu. It is a massive cultural loss. The kind of loss people felt when Germany lost Dresden.
The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.
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.
One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.
I have said before, you don't expect conservative parties to believe in much, but you do expect them to believe in thrift.
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.
I think Australia has to be a country which has the 'Welcome' sign out.
As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me.
I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage.
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.
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.
The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished.
In the end, rational policy is always good.
The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.
I always believed in burning up the government's political capital, not being Mr Safe Guy, you know?
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.
