Robert Menzies Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“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 -
“A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend . . .”
-- Robert Menzies -
“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 -
“Two days in this city is worth two months in New York.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“Considering the company I keep in this place, that is hardly surprising.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“More good things in life are lost by indifference than ever were lost by active hostility.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“"I pay my taxes," says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“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 -
“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 -
“Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“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 -
“A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful money-maker and never contribute to his country anything more than a horrible example.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“I am one of the few men honest enough to say they do not understand women.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“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 -
“In all my life I have treated the press with marked contempt and remarkable success.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“Never take any notice of Anonymous letters, unless you get a few thousand on the same subject.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“I did but see her passing by and yet I love her till I die.”
-- Robert Menzies -
“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 -
“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 -
“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