Geoffrey Blainey: Trending quotes

“Australia's place on new trade routes was decisive in its early history. It aided the convict settlement. It prompted the rise of a new free group of Australian traders who did not depend heavily on the favours of governors, who were alert for new ways of making money, and who were eventually to hasten Australia's transition from a gaol to a series of free colonies.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

Money , Way , History , Decision

“When traditional Australians argue that Asian migrants should be welcome but that the ethnic mix of the nation should not be altered too quickly, they are labelled racists. But when ethnic minorities lobby politicians to enlist as many new migrants as possible from their own race, this is applauded as multiculturalism.”

Geoffrey Blainey

"Immigration: Australia's Rag Doll,", The Weekend Australian (June 2-3, 1990)

“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: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

“The multicultural lobby has little respect for the history of Australia between 1788 and 1950. In the eyes of multicultural supporters, Australia was a desert between 1788 and 1950 because it was populated largely by people from the British Isles and because it seemed to have a cultural unity, a homogeneity which is the very antithesis of multiculturalism.”

Geoffrey Blainey

Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey (1991)

People , History , Support

“To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of history. This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly everything that came after was believed to be pretty good. There is a rival view, which I call the Black Armband view of history. In recent years it has assailed the optimistic view of history. The black armbands were quietly worn in official circles in 1988. The multicultural folk busily preached their message that until they arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace. The past treatment of Aborigines, of Chinese, of Kanakas, of non-British migrants, of women, the very old, the very young, and the poor was singled out, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not. … The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced.”

Geoffrey Blainey

"Balance Sheet On Our History," Quadrant (July 1993)

Women , History , Success , Past

“Democracy is not like a long-term loan of property to be entrusted by the people to the government and its small group of advisors. And yet in recent years a small group of people has successfully snatched immigration policy from the public arena, and has even placed a taboo on the discussion of vital aspects of immigration.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

Source: All for Australia (1984)

People , Democracy

“Every nation has the right to control its own immigration. To shape sensibly an immigration policy is to influence nearly every facet of life, now and for generations to come.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

Life

“The ethnic composition of the population - and the particular mixture of nationalities, languages and cultures - is a matter of importance to all nations. The selection of immigrants should not be seen primarily as a test of which nationalities are best. It is more important to select immigrants with an eye to the collective effect on the nation. An immigration policy is not a symbol, a banner, of a nation's attitude to other peoples or races; and to reject potential immigrants is in no way to doubt the worthiness of their nationality or culture.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

People , Way

“Our immigration policy is increasingly based on an appeal to international precepts that our neighbours sensibly refuse to practise. We are surrendering much of our own independence to a phantom opinion that floats vaguely in the air and rarely exists on this earth. We should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

People , World , Thinking

“I do not accept the view, widely held in the Federal Cabinet, that some kind of slow Asian takeover of Australia is inevitable. I do not believe that we are powerless. I do believe that we can with good will and good sense control our destiny…. As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better.”

Geoffrey Blainey

"The Dilemma of Asian Immigration," The Age (March 20, 1984)

People , Sense , Past

“The history of Australia, black or white, is not only the struggle between peoples but the struggle between nature and people. Nature tamed many of the settlers, sometimes defeating them, but people held many victories, sometimes at high cost.”

Geoffrey Blainey

A Shorter History of Australia (1994)

People , History , Nature , Victory

“During their long period of unease about a hot Christmas, Australians rarely noticed that they had more access than their British relatives to a vital part of the traditional Christmas story: 'the stars in the bright sky'. Eventually they ceased to lament that their Christmas came in hot weather.”

Geoffrey Blainey

Black Kettle and Full Moon: Daily Life in a Vanished Australia (2003)

Star , Christmas , Parting , Weather

“Whether we like the idea or not, war has again and again been seen as the great auditor, the special testing time, of a nation's strength and fibre.”

Geoffrey Blainey

"Gallipoli: A Battle for a Mammoth Prize," The Australian (April 24, 1990)

War , Idea , Time

“Australia and New Zealand depended so much on Britain, were in most senses imitations of Britain, that their geographical position near the end of Asia's tail and near the islands of Oceania seemed irrelevant.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

Sense , Dependency

“In December 1941, when Australians began to sense that they were plunged into a new environment, the spectacles they had carried out from Britain were obsolete. They needed spectacles that would correct short-sightedness. They had to see the environment they were in as clearly as the environment they had left across the world.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

World , Sense

“Some talk of the “history wars” raging in Australia. The word “war” is mistaken. Controversy, not war, will continue for a long time to come. It is in the nature of history and of most intellectual activities, and the more so in a nation where the main strands of history – Aboriginal and European – are utterly different.”

Geoffrey Blainey

"Geoffrey Blainey: I can see parts of our history with fresh eyes," The Australian (February 21, 2015)

War , History , Nature , Rage

“Looking back on Rome's success, it is all too easy to conclude that its victories were preordained. It is almost as if Rome arose with consummate certainty from the seven hills, gaining such a height that seemingly it could not be challenged. But in almost every phase of Rome's history there were crises.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

History , Success , Victory

“The idea is still widespread that Australians were among the world's most persistent racists until the White Australia policy was abolished. But in 1900, and long after, almost every part of the Western world was wary of large-scale immigration from poorer, low-wage countries whose reigning culture was different. Asians at times were wary of outsiders. Between 1860 and 1914 it was safer to be a Chinese gold-digger living in Australia than to be an Australian, especially a female missionary, living in China.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

World , Idea , Time , Parting

“No wars are unintended or 'accidental'. What is often unintended is the length and bloodiness of the war.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Causes of War (1973)

War

“Unpredictable events, or the coincidence of vital events happening side by side, play their part in history. In the emerging of the United States of America, the South American nations, South Africa, Canada and Australia the unforeseen mixture of events was especially powerful in the final decades of the 18th century. Many of those events pirouetted around the fortunes of France, whose influence was as decisive when it was losing as when it was winning wars.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

War , History , Decision , Parting