Robert Menzies Quotes

• We took the name 'Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

  Robert Menzies

  Party, Believe, Rights

  74 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Hope, Wisdom, Truth

  89 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Country, Successful, Men

  60 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Things In Life, Indifference, Good Things

  73 Copy quote

• I did but see her passing by and yet I love her till I die.

  Robert Menzies

  Love, Passing By, Passings

  47 Copy quote

• The great vice of democracy 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 effort on which we could thrive.

  Robert Menzies

  Leadership, Effort, Democracy

  55 Copy quote

• What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north.

  Robert Menzies

  East, Britain, Great Britain

  1939 Quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Apr. Menzies was one of the first Australian statesmen to recognize the importance to his country of Asia.

  40 Copy quote

• Modern history is, as you all know, full of examples of great movements that disappeared because they had ceased to have any genuine reason for existence. The important thing is to have a faith to live by, and that goes for us in this party.

  Robert Menzies

  Party, Important, Example

  37 Copy quote

• When people meet my wife they think better of me. They say: "With a wife like that, he can't be as bad as we thought".

  Robert Menzies

  Thinking, People, Wife

  41 Copy quote

• The kind of people I myself represent in parliament; salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on, these are, in a political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious.

  Robert Menzies

  Business, Men, Class

  49 Copy quote

• A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful moneymaker and never contribute to his country anything more than a horrible example. A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend, and may leave behind him an exhausted industry and a legacy of industrial hatred. A tough manager may never look outside his own factory walls or be conscious of his partnership in a wider world. I often wonder what strange cud such men sit chewing when their working days are over, and the accumulating riches of the mind have eluded them.

  Robert Menzies

  Country, Business, Wall

  58 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Thinking, Speech, Never Forget

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Menzies

  Thinking, Class, People

  33 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Years, Young, Bureaucrats

  22 Copy quote

• Men of genius are not to be analysed by commonplace rules. The rest of us who have been or are leaders, more commonplace in our quality, will do well to 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.

  Robert Menzies

  Men, Thinking, Two

  27 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Women, Honest, Enough

  18 Copy quote

• "I pay my taxes," says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.

  Robert Menzies

  Pay, Virtue, Taxes

  25 Copy quote

• Never take any notice of Anonymous letters, unless you get a few thousand on the same subject.

  Robert Menzies

  Party, Anonymous Letters, Thousand

  17 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Opinion, Speak, Economist

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Menzies

  Leadership, Education, Learning

  19 Copy quote

• Two days in this city is worth two months in New York.

  Robert Menzies

  New York, Cities, Two

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Menzies

  Character, Blow, Law

  48 Copy quote

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

  Robert Menzies

  Considering, Company, Surprising

  18 Copy quote

• Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

  Robert Menzies

  Art, Intelligent, People

  11 Copy quote

• A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend . . .

  Robert Menzies

  May, Lasts, Tough

  16 Copy quote

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