Quotes About Australians

Those of you who have spent time with Australians know that we are not given to overstatement. By nature we are laconic speakers and by conviction we are realistic thinkers.

This is another world to the ones most Australians know. It was explained by my father once that it's like a blanket on the ground. We, the uninitiated, only see the blanket. Lift it up and that's what our elders... see - the real thing - a world most of us will never know or understand. Through their paintings, artists... offer us a glimpse of the world of dreams where the past, present and the future link.

Slave holding is very unusual among the English-speaking peoples. Canadians didn't do it. Australians didn't do it. The Democratic Party and the states they controlled did it!

Everybody spoke English in my class, and they would turn to me and say, "What's going on in your country?" I would try to explain to Austrians, Poles, Australians, Israelis, Costa Ricans - people from all over the world - what was going on in our country. I would have to say, "I don't know what's going on, either. It's pretty evenly divided in our country. Sometimes one part's on top, and other times, the other faction is on top, and right now it's just crazy. We hate it as much as you do."

They (the youth of Australia) are out there clamouring in all forms of voice, and they are not so much hedging us older Australians aside as saying, 'For heaven's sake, listen to us and empower us to help drive this country towards a wonderful future.'

The idea of having Australians upset at me is just awful.

With increasing frequency and growing vehemence, you hear people saying they are ashamed to be Australians.

It's very easy for Australians living in big cities to either romanticise or demonise the situation in Aboriginal places - to kind of look at things through the 'noble innocents' prism or through the 'chronically dysfunctional' prism, and I suspect that is so often the case.

Australianism' means single-minded determination to win - to win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them. It means where the 'impossible' is within the realm of what the human body can do, there are Australians who believe that they can do it - and who have succeeded often enough to make us wonder if anything is impossible to them. It means they have never lost a match - particularly a Test match - until the last run is scored or their last wicket down.

I think Americans are probably getting sick of us Australians trying to take their jobs.

Is it possible that literacy standards are falling because young Australians are growing up in a culture in which they can be entertained and informed, and in which they can communicate effectively, without having to master any but the most rudimentary literacy skills?

Australia is a very healthy country which goes along with the fact that it's very high on the Human Development Index, high wealth, good levels of education. So Australia ranks right up there, second or third on the Human Development Index. And Indigenous Australians, if you treated them as if they were a separate country, would rank probably about 100th or below 100.

What's wrong with leading the way? We've played that role before, after all. We gave the world the secret ballot... that did so much to raise living standards and improve conditions for workers worldwide. We were a leader in extending to women the right to vote. We were barely a nation when we set the bar for bravery and sacrifice by common soldiers in foreign wars. We grew up out of racism and misogyny and homophobia to become a mostly tolerant, successful multicultural society. We did these great things because we know we are in it together. It is our core value as Australians.

We are moving toward recognition of the first Australians in the Australian constitution.