Popular quotes about Australia! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
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.
Paul KeatingI came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys. But I've been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.
Alan DaleAustralia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.
Baz LuhrmannI conclude where I began, I was elected by the people of Australia to do a job. I was not elected by the factional leaders of Australia, of the Australian Labor Party to do a job - though they may be seeking to do a job on me, that's a separate matter. The challenge therefore is to honour the mandate given to me by the Australian people.
Kevin RuddI think I made some mistakes, in different areas, but it's great to be working in a show again now, many years down the track. I have worked in many other different shows in Australia and I've been able to learn from my mistakes. I'm lucky that I made those mistakes early on in Australia, and I definitely won't make them again in the States, but you've got to learn that stuff.
Dustin ClareBut in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.
Thomas KeneallyI was pointing out the depth of the friendship between Australia and Indonesia and the fact that Australia has been there for Indonesia when Indonesia has been in difficulty.
Tony AbbottNational film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word "industry" is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.
Peter WeirNo one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.
Bill BrysonContemporary bands often will do tour-only releases pressed and sold only in Australia. Crikey!
Henry RollinsI knew she was from Australia and I knew that is where she started but I didn't know if she was still popular there. I hope people understand we aren't making fun of Kylie.
Wayne CoyneTo the former child migrants, who came to Australia from a home far away, led to believe this land would be a new beginning, when only to find it was not a beginning, but an end, an end of innocence - we apologise and we are sorry. To the mothers who lost the maternal right to love and care for their child - we apologise, and we are sorry.
Malcolm TurnbullI'm a big goofball, you know. Don't tell anyone that, but I'm a big goofball. In Australia we call it a dag.
Hugh JackmanToday the thing I find myself thinking about the most is our landscape...I think it's something a lot of us take for granted; for many of us Australia is just there but how many of us have really seen it, have seen Kakadu or Kings Canyon? I know I hope to at some stage, to see Uluru at sunset and the ancient art in the Abrakurrie caves. I think it's our landscape which defines our identity and it's what I'm most grateful for.
Mick DodsonOpera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.
George BrandisAnother time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.
Phil CollinsGrowing up in Australia, you never feel like you're going to live beyond that place. You wake up and you go to the beach, and you do your homework. You're just a kid.
Heath LedgerI've seen it [Australia] go from a lot of small towns to big towns, but I think it has found its identity in all this time... it's a very special country, I could easily live here.
Suzi QuatroI want the marginality to come into the center. This is the thing I was conscious of growing up, when I later lived in England. I saw all these war movies that came out shortly after the war, and they were all about the war being fought by Englishmen or Americans, there were no other "allies" in it - from India or Australia, etc.
Michael OndaatjeThere have been 44 constitutional referenda in Australia and only eight have succeeded.
George BrandisWe've seen progressive rock all over the world, in South America, Europe, Asia, across the US and North America and Australia. There's huge audiences for this stuff. For me it's always been there and it's just a matter of time before the people have more of the means to spread the word.
John PetrucciAustralia integrated the - brought on the ships and unleashed in the society the dogs of sectarianism, which had existed in other places - in Glasgow, in Liverpool and of course in Ireland, north and south.
Thomas KeneallyOne of the things that's interesting is that the PC has always had a huge amount of scalability. It was sort of the wild dog that moved into Australia and killed all the local life because it could just adapt. There used to be these dedicated devices, like dedicated word processors.
Gabe NewellAnyone who thinks it's smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty.
Malcolm TurnbullI knew a bit but we don't study a lot of British history at school in Australia. We have our own 50-year period to concentrate on.
Eric BanaDid you know that Christmas Day is absolutely the best day to fly? It is. No crowded airports and crowded planes. I always flew to Australia. That's what Christmas was for me - a plane journey to the next tournament
Monica SelesI thought I was actually doing quite well - I was on Jazz FM six days a week. I fancied going to Australia and I had a wonderful experience. It's changed me for the better and it was flattering to win.
Tony BlackburnSavagery was a word that Westerners used to, again, to consciously differentiate them from non-Westerners, to assert that superiority, that cultural superiority. It goes back to the British Empire, and again, you know, what was the purpose of the British Empire? To bring civilization to the savage no matter where they were, whether it was India or Asia or Australia or whatever. It's that civilizing mission that characterizes so much of the history of Western colonialism.
Robert A. Williams, Jr.Well, I'm very dyslexic, so I can't read music. It means I never know where I'm at so it's different every single time. I know when it works though. I might end up doing a bosa nova version of Bad Day when I get to Australia!
Daniel PowterMy mom was an environmental activist in Australia in the late โ60s and โ70s and I guess Iโve inherited that awareness from her.
Robin McLeavyWhen I went to Australia, I went shark diving. It was crazy. It was called 'extreme' shark diving because even though we were in cages, we literally could touch the sharks swimming by. They were huge and I'm terrified of sharks. Then I went to a wildlife park and held kangaroos. That was nice.
Taylor LautnerI assume the same problem exists in Australia as in America of back-biting and jealousy and parochialism among disciplines - there are the scientists, and there are the humanities people, and there are chemists and the physicists and everybody snipes at everybody else and inter-disciplinary communication is rare. But it's very precious and necessary.
Richard LewontinIt is in the national interest to have the Flying Kangaroo. It's in the interests of our tourism industry. It's in the interests of jobs here in Australia.
Anthony AlbaneseScientists in Australia are working on making biodegradable car parts out of hemp. This might get confusing. When someone says, roll up the window, they might mean, roll up the window!
Jay LenoโMa'am?โ She glanced up at me, pushing her glasses up her nose as she did. โHmm? Oh, I remember you. Miss Melbourne.โ โMelrose,โ I corrected. โAre you sure? I could've sworn you were named after someplace in Australia.โ โWell, my first name is Sydney,โ I said, not sure if I should be encouraging her.
Richelle MeadI got plenty of guesses wrong on things in the past as well. I don't want to pretend I have some great insight... But when the global financial crisis came along in 2008 it was scary times if you were in the middle of building $5 billion buildings. It wasn't perfect... I think that I am the luckiest person in Australia.
James PackerMost of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.
Tony AbbottI want to go to Australia and take the same goofy picture of me holding a koala that everyone else takes.
Jessi KleinI remember learning German - so beautiful, so strange - at school in Australia on the other side of the earth. My family was nonplussed about me learning such an odd, ugly language and, though of course too sophisticated to say it, the language of the enemy. But I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English - Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewรคltigung.
Anna FunderSo what is the Dreaming? I would say the Dreaming is a non-indigenous term used in its broadest sense to describe the stories of our ancestors and how they shaped the land and how they are still part of the land... Across Aboriginal Australia there are as many different terms for Dreaming as there are language groups
Hetti Perkins