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“Many convicts were bewildered by the first days of the voyage to Australia. Most had never seen the open sea until they boarded the convict ship, and few had travelled in a ship. And now, by sentence of the courts, they were about to begin one of the longest voyages any traveller could make.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia (2015)

“For ages the Aborigines had relied heavily on isolation. It was their asset and their liability, and gave them long-term control of the continent. But if their isolation were to end, as it ultimately had to end with a shrinking world, their whole way of life could be fractured. Even the arrival of a few thousand permanent settlers, whether from Europe or Asia, would be like the first tremors of an earthquake.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia (2015)

“Nothing in the traditional life of Aborigines was more impressive than their practical knowledge. They were masters of their environment even though they could do little to change it.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia (2015)

“The majority of Australians are now paying the price of a policy that is eager to please each ethnic minority at the expense of the great majority. If the people of each minority should have the right to establish here a way of life familiar to them, is it not equally right - or more so, in democracy - for the majority of Australians to retain the way of life familiar to them?”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

“A policy on immigration helps to determine the unity as well as the size of the population. Should Australia so select its immigrants that the society is relatively unified? Or should it select immigrants who promote diversity? Should Australia continue to be dominated by Anglo-Celtic peoples and the English language and institutions? Or should it become the new Eurasia? In choosing immigrants and the pace at which they arrive, how far should we risk social and racial tensions?”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

“War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallisation of past force.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Causes of War (1973)

“Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.”

Geoffrey Blainey

Source: The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

“The slow decline of Christianity prepared the way for new Utopias and doomsdays. Indeed some of the new views of the future contained many of the characteristics of a religion.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

“One lesson of history is that every gain has its potential loss. The highest human achievements carry the danger of pride, and pride can lead blindly to disaster, just as failure can fortify the determination and so lead slowly towards triumph.”

Geoffrey Blainey

The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

“If we disown history we are at its mercy. To have a reasonable knowledge of the past is to possess an anchor which is likely to prevent us from being swept towards false ideas about the present and future.”

Geoffrey Blainey

Source: The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

“People need to feel they belong to their country. Their need for community is most pronounced in a time of adversity. The people who are hit hardest by a depression, who feel that their children will suffer, look for loyalty from the rest of the community and the government. The present immigration programme, in its indifference to the feelings of the old Australians, erodes those loyalties. The multicultural policy, and its emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority, gnaws at that sense of solidarity that many people crave for.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

“The decline of the churches was a sweeping social revolution, because they had done more than any other institution, public or private, to civilise Australians.”

Geoffrey Blainey

A Shorter History of Australia (1994)