Paul Keating

You know, in the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.

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.

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.

At its best, Aboriginal art has been effective in translating an entire culture and the understanding of an entire continent. Indeed, the more we interpret Australia through Aboriginal eyes, through the experience of their long and epic story, the more we allow ourselves to understand the land we share.

The more we view the country through the prism of Aboriginality, the more likely we are to get the angle right.

I always believed in burning up the government's political capital, not being Mr Safe Guy, you know?

As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me.

The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.

The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.

You get one chance to do something about native title. You get perhaps one chance in your life to do something about a republic. You get one chance, your chance, to build a piece of the political architecture in the Pacific. I wasn't going to give those up.

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

Aboriginal art and culture draws from the land, for Aboriginality and the land are essential to each other and are inseparable.