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Robert Menzies

Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia (1894-1978)

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies KT, AK, CH, PC, QC, FAA, FRS (20 December 1894 – 15 May 1978) was an Australian politician, founder of the Australian Liberal Party, and Australia's 12th and longest serving Prime Minister. Menzies' tenure as Prime Minister saw Australia's involvement in the Second World War, Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as opening trade relations with Japan in 1953 and defining Australia's place in the Cold War era.

Robert Gordon Menzies

Quotes

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Early career (1934–1939)

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  • At last we are in England. Our journey to Mecca has ended and our minds abandoned to those reflections which can so strangely (unless you remember our traditions and our upbringing) move the souls of those who go "home" to a land they have never seen.
  • I am today beginning to understand as I have never understood before, the secret springs of English poetry and English thought and the getting of that wisdom which infuses the slow English character. The green and tranquil place sends forth from her soil the love of peace and of good humour and of contentment.
    • Diary (11 May 1935), after visiting Cambridgeshire. — Judith Brett, Political Lives (1997), pp. 76–7

First Term as Prime Minister (1939–1941)

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What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north.
  • What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north.
    • Policy speech (1939), quoted by C. Hartley Grattan, "An Australian–American Axis?", in Harper's Magazine, vol. 180 (May 1940), p. 562
  • I would like to thank all those present—and those who are no longer present.
  • It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of the persistence of Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement.
    Great Britain and France, with the cooperation of the British Dominions, have struggled to avoid this tragedy. They have, as I firmly believe, been patient; they have kept the door of negotiation open; they have given no cause for aggression. But in the result their efforts have failed and we are, therefore, as a great family of nations, involved in a struggle which we must at all costs win, and which we believe in our hearts we will win.
  • We can lose this war, and with it we can lose all. But we shall not lose it if every individual in the British Empire determines that for him there shall be nothing but cheerful and self-sacrificing effort until the war is over. I tell you quite bluntly that Australia cannot play her proper part in the winning of this war if she subtracts from her war effort by one unnecessary grumble, or by one act of sectional selfishness, or by the unnecessary loss of one day’s work.

Wilderness Years (1941–1949)

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  • 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 organised 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. 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.
  • The material home represents the concrete expression of the habits of frugality and saving "for a home of our own." Your advanced socialist may rave against private property even while he acquires it; but one of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours; to which we can withdraw, in which we can be among our friends, into which no stranger may come against our will.
  • A great house, full of loneliness, is not a home. “Stone walls do not a prison make”, nor do they make a house. They may equally make a stable or a piggery. Brick walls, dormer windows and central heating need not make more than a hotel. My home is where my wife and children are. The instinct to be with them is the great instinct of civilised man; the instinct to give them a chance in life – to make them not leaners but lifters – is a noble instinct.
  • 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.
  • Are you looking forward to a breed of men after the war who will have become boneless wonders? Leaners grow flabby; lifters grow muscles. Men without ambition readily become slaves. Indeed, there is much more in slavery in Australia than most people imagine. How many hundreds of thousands of us are slaves to greed, to fear, to newspapers, to public opinion – represented by the accumulated views of our neighbours! Landless men smell the vapours of the street corner. Landed men smell the brown earth, and plant their feet upon it and know that it is good.
  • The country has great and imperative obligations to the weak, the sick, the unfortunate. It must give to them all the sustenance and support it can. We look forward to social and unemployment insurances, to improved health services, to a wiser control of our economy to avert if possible all booms and slumps which tend to convert labour into a commodity, to a better distribution of wealth, to a keener sense of social justice and social responsibility. We not only look forward to these things, we shall demand and obtain them.
    • "Freedom from Want" radio talk (10 July 1942), the fifth of "The Forgotten People" series
  • The most fundamental task in front of us is to educate a new generation, not for mere money-making or to comply with the law, but for an enlightened citizenship based upon honest thinking and human understanding.
    • "Schools and the War" radio talk (16 October 1942), the thirtieth of "The Forgotten People" series)
  • The best epitaph for a true democrat will not be, "I tickled people's ears, I got their votes, I spent their money", but, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."
    • "The Sickness of Democracy" radio talk (30 October 1942), the thirty-fourth of "The Forgotten People" series
  • One thing about bureaucrats is that they never swallow their young. Leave them alone and you'll find them increasing every year.
    • At a Liberal Party rally in Melbourne (1946). Quoted in Ray Robinson, The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies (1966)
  • The Communists are the most unscrupulous opponents of religion, of civilised government, of law and order, of national security. Abroad, but for the threat of aggressive Russian Imperialism, there would be real peace today. Communism in Australia is an alien and destructive pest. If elected, we shall outlaw it.
    • 1949 election campaign speech delivered in Melbourne (10 November 1949)
  • The highest production and living standards cannot be achieved without a new and human spirit in the industrial world. No industry can succeed without the co-operation of capital, management and labour. Each must be encouraged. Each must be fairly rewarded. Between the three there must be mutual understanding and respect.
    • 1949 election campaign speech delivered in Melbourne (10 November 1949)
  • Australia urgently needs more people, and we shall vigorously continue a drive for them. They should be selected with regard to our national needs, and their capacity to become absorbed into our community. Though we naturally want as many migrants as we can get of British stock, we denounce all attempts to create hostilities against any migrant or group of migrants, whether Jew or Gentile, on the grounds of race or religion. Once received into our community, a new citizen is entitled to be treated in every way as a fellow-Australian.
    • 1949 election campaign speech delivered in Melbourne (10 November 1949)
  • If I have tried to observe the personal courtesies of public life, it is not because I fail to hate the political enemy’s creed. If I have sought to find some humour in the conflict, it is not because I under-estimate the gravity of the battle. The best years of my life have been given to what I deeply believe is a struggle for freedom.
    • 1949 election campaign speech delivered in Melbourne (10 November 1949)
  • Twice in this century men have died by the millions, largely because in what might have been the golden age of history men have learned to live with machines and have forgotten how to live with one another.

Second Term as Prime Minister (1949–1966)

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I am British to the bootstraps!
  • If we want to make our contribution to the pacification of the world, it is our duty to present to the world the spectacle of a rich country with a great people, with an adequate population — with a population which may justly say to the rest of the world: 'We are here; we propose to maintain our integrity as a nation; and our warrant for that is that we are using the resources which God has given into our hands.'
    • Citizenship Convention, Canberra (23 January 1950). Quoted in David Day, Claiming a Continent (1997), p. 388
  • The real and active Communists in Australia present us with our immediate problem — not the woolly-headed dupes, not the people who are pushed to the front in order to present a respectable appearance, but the real and active Communists.
  • Heckler: I wouldn't vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel.
  • Menzies: If I were the Archangel Gabriel, you wouldn't be in my constituency.
    • Conversation with interjecting heckler in Williamstown, Victoria (1954). — Michael Fullilove, "Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and Robert Menzies, our holy trinity of speakers", The Sydney Morning Herald (12 September 2014)
    • Variant reported in Kenneth Edwards, I Wish I'd Said That Too! (London: Abelard, 1977), p. 9:
      If I were the Archangel Gabriel, madam, you would scarcely be in my constituency.
    • Cp. Dr. Macnamara, "Platform Humours", in The Idler, vol. 25 (April–September 1904), p. 290:
      Easily the smartest platform retort I remember was that of a candidate to whom one of his audience had yelled: “I wudd’n vote for one o’ yeur colour even if you was the Archangel Gabrill!”
      “If I were the Archangel Gabriel,” quietly replied the candidate, “I greatly fear my friend that you wouldn't be on the Register!”
  • A vehement concentration upon 'rights' obscures the vital fact that unless duties are accepted and performed by each of us, not only our rights but the rights of others will die for want of nourishment. If we were all tired democrats, eager beneficiaries but reluctant contributors, democracy would collapse under its own weight.
  • Many times I have said, and I repeat it tonight, that we do badly to think of the pioneers as grandfathers, with beards and bowyangs; dead and gone, their labours completed. For the truth is that when a nation gives up pioneering, it goes back. A pioneer is, quite simply, one who breaks new ground or sets out on new adventures. His essence is that he is willing to tackle a new problem, and has a sense of responsibility for the future. Such qualities are not common, and therefore we cannot all be managers. But unless in every generation we have an adequate supply of pioneers, future generations will not call us blessed. Flashy policies, get-rich-quick schemes, the preferring of big current dividends to solid reserves for future development; these are the negation of the pioneering spirit, for they deny or ignore responsibility for the future.
  • A national election campaign is not a conflict of self-interest, with the prize going to the highest bidder. It is an occasion for a re-statement of faith, a renewal of zeal, and a clear vision of the future.
  • I am an immense believer in continuity. I am not a believer in looking at the past because it is dead; but looking at the past because it is living; looking at the past because it reminds us that we are in the great procession of life. Any man who walked in the procession of life and who aims at doing anything in life, who is unaware of what went before him, unaware of the great truths that have come down to him, is a foolish man. He is, essentially, a short-sighted man.
  • There is a tremendous amount of talk engaged in about economic problems; there is a great amount of discussion about how much more money A gets or B gets or C gets. We could easily become man for man, woman for woman, the richest country in the Southern Hemisphere, but it won't matter very much unless we can say that we are the most civilised country in the Southern Hemisphere. Civilised because we understand the unselfish duties of citizenship; civilised because we have come to understand the importance of the human being, the dignity of the human being, the dignity of labour, the responsibility of riches. These are the tests of civilisation, and our great task is to produce a civilised nation.
  • [O]ur whole history has been a history of adventure, sailing wherever ships could sail. This island continent came out of the mists; it was developed by people who had the spirit of adventure. It has been found by people who had the spirit of adventure. Wherever you go in Australia, you see all the memorials, not cairns of store, but the memorials in farms and stations and factories to the people who had the spirit of adventure. And without that spirit of adventure, Australia can't become by the turn of the century the great and powerful and respected country to whose noises I would hope to listen from the grave.
  • All I ask you to remember, in this country of yours, is that every man, woman and child who even sees you with a passing glimpse as you go by, will remember it – remember it with joy, remember it in the words of the old seventeenth-century poet who wrote those famous words –
    "I did but see her passing by
    And yet I love her till I die."
  • There have been, in the course of recorded history, some men of power who have cast shadows across the world. Winston Churchill, on the contrary, was a fountain of light and of hope. [...] His body will be carried on the Thames, a river full of history. With one heart we all feel, with one mind we all acknowledge, that it will never have borne a more precious burden, or been enriched by more splendid memories.

Post-politics (1966–1978)

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  • It has become the vogue for some writers in Australia to refer to me, apparently under the impression that they are using a derogatory expression, as an 'anglophile'. I certainly am, and would be sadly disappointed if I thought that a majority of my fellow citizens were not of the same mind. I love Britain because I love Australia, and like to think that I have done her some service. I cannot go anywhere in Australia without being reminded of our British inheritance; our system of responsible government and Parliamentary institutions, our adherence to the rule of law and, indeed, our systems of law themselves; our traditions of integrity in high places and of incorruptibility in our Civil Service. We derive all these things from Westminster. Our language comes to us from Britain and so does the bulk of our literature. To have no love for a relatively small community in the North Sea which created and handed on these vital matters would be, in my mind, a miserable act of ingratitude. The fact that in Australia we have received all these things, and have made all our own notable contributions to their development, not only fills me with pride but strengthens my affection.

Undated

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  • There is hardly a section of the community that doesn't in one breath protest undying hostility to Government interference and, in the next breath, pray for it.
    • Quoted in Ray Robinson, The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies (1966)
  • 'I pay my taxes', says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.
    • Quoted in Ray Robinson, The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies (1966)
  • I owe my tolerable health to having selected my parents well.
    • Quoted in Ray Robinson, The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies (1966)

Quotes about Menzies

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"It's not a crown, it's an old felt hat!"
  • Robert Menzies could not lead a flock of homing pigeons.
    • Billy Hughes, quoted in Fred Daley, From Curtin to Kerr (1977)
  • They put a crown upon his head
    And though he wore it into bed,
    He sometimes said as he sadly sat,
    "It's not a crown, it's an old felt hat!"
    • Anonymous, set of rhymes, beginning "Robert the King was hard to know...", quoted in Edgar George Holt, Politics is People (1969), p. 108
  • The Augustan simplifications of Sir Robert Menzies and the cheery simplicities of Mr Holt have been replaced by the confused superficialities of Mr Gorton.
  • Menzies was the first – and maybe the only – national leader of whom it could be safely said that he was capable of rising to the top of almost any ladder he dared to climb.
    • Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia's People, Vol. 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)
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