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Robert Menzies citations

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies , est un homme d'État australien qui fut le douzième Premier ministre d'Australie et reste encore celui qui occupa le plus longtemps ce poste : dix-huit ans et demi. Il arriva jeune à ce poste mais y connut un échec sévère qui le conduisit à huit ans de traversée du désert dans l'opposition, période pendant laquelle il fonda le "Liberal Party" . Il redevint Premier ministre aux élections de 1949 et resta à ce poste jusqu'à sa retraite politique en 1966. Il avait la réputation d'être un brillant orateur tant dans l'enceinte du parlement que pendant les campagnes électorales avec par exemple le lancement de l'expression "the forgotten people" pour parler des classes moyennes. Wikipedia  

✵ 20. décembre 1894 – 15. mai 1978
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Robert Menzies: 22   citations 0   J'aime

Robert Menzies: Citations en anglais

“We have no offer to make except that we shall serve you faithfully.”

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Robert Menzies

Election speech, 1951
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Contexte: In conclusion, we have sought this election to resolve a deadlock. We have no offer to make except that we shall serve you faithfully. What we seek is a Senate majority. If you approve of the Labour Senators frustrating your vote of December, 1949, you will not give us a majority in either house. To give it in the one and refuse it in the other would be a tragedy for Australia.

“Women are unquestionably destined to exercise more and more influence upon practical politics in Australia”

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Robert Menzies

Albury Conference, 1944
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Contexte: Women are unquestionably destined to exercise more and more influence upon practical politics in Australia…In the educating of the electorate in liberal ideas they have for many years been an effective force. Now we have an organisation in which all distinctions have gone, and with men and women working equally for the one body …

“Fellow Australians, 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.”

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Robert Menzies

Declaration of War Broadcast, on the outbreak of the Second World War, 3 September 1939
First Term as Prime Minister (1939-1941)
Contexte: Fellow Australians, 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...

“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.”

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Robert Menzies

Freedom from Want radio talk, July 10, 1942 (the fifth of "The Forgotten People" series)
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Source: http://menziesvirtualmuseum.org.au/transcripts/the-forgotten-people/63-chapter-5-freedom-from-want

“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.”

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Robert Menzies

Eulogy for Winston Churchill, delivered from the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, during the latter's funeral, January 30, 1965
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://australianpolitics.com/1965/01/30/robert-menzies-eulogy-for-winston-churchill.html

“We have had office without power; responsibility without the full means of discharging it. I say to you that the times are too grave and the burden of government too heavy to be confronted or borne by any Ministry which lacks the full power to place its plans on the statute-book, and to give that public leadership which is confidently based upon a loyal Parliamentary following. With your aid we believe that we can, as we must, do much to make Australia strong and to keep her free.”

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Robert Menzies

Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1951-robert-menzies

“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.' The case for immigration on a grand scale is, indeed, an irresistible one.”

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Robert Menzies

Citizenship Convention, Canberra, 23 January, 1950.
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://www.australianquotes.com/quotes_1950-present.php

“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. We have a clear choice, and we must make it clearly. We can attack these Communists frontally, or we can adopt inaction and justify it by accepting one or all of the arguments that are used currently to justify inaction.”

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Robert Menzies

House of Representatives, Canberra, 27 April, 1950
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://www.australianquotes.com/quotes_1950-present.php

“Heckler: "I wouldn't vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel"”

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Robert Menzies

Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)

“In the whole of recorded modern history, this was, I believe, the one occasion when one man, with one soaring imagination, with one fire burning in him, and with one unrivalled capacity for conveying it to others, won a crucial victory not only for the forces (for there were many heroes in those days) but for the very spirit of human freedom. And so, on this great day, we thank him, and we thank God for him.”

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Robert Menzies

Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)

“Few people of the Commonwealth fully realised that the European crisis might involve hostilities in Australian waters – that war might be something that would come to Australia, and not merely something that was happening 12,000 miles away.”

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Robert Menzies

In speech to the Constitutional Club of Sydney, October 1938
Early career (1934-1939)
Source: https://www.jewishnews.net.au/menzies-an-enemy-of-tyranny-and-friend-of-freedom/29309

“In the long run, will our community not be a stronger, better balanced and more intelligent community when the last artificial disabilities imposed upon women by centuries of custom have been removed?”

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Robert Menzies

Women in War speech, broadcast from Sydney, Australia — February 20, 1942
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Source: http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/women_in_war.htm

“The real danger of the regime was that the suppression of criticism would ultimately destroy Germany.”

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Robert Menzies

In conversation with Hjalmar Schacht, regarding Nazi Germany, during his four day visit in 1938
Early career (1934-1939)
Source: https://www.jewishnews.net.au/menzies-an-enemy-of-tyranny-and-friend-of-freedom/29309

“His real tyrant is the glittering phrase so attractive to his mind that awkward facts have to give way.”

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Robert Menzies

On British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, diary entry of March 2, 1941
First Term as Prime Minister (1939-1941)
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20080228185527/http://www.oph.gov.au/menzies/churchillandthewarcabinet.htm

“Menzies: "If I were the Archangel Gabriel, you wouldn't be in my constituency"”

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Robert Menzies

Conversation with interjecting heckler in Williamstown, Victoria, 1954
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/menzies/in-office.aspx

“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.”

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Robert Menzies

1949 election campaign speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1949-robert-menzies, delivered in Melbourne on November 10, 1949
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)

“Women are unquestionably destined to exercise more and more influence upon practical politics in Australia…In the educating of the electorate in liberal ideas they have for many years been an effective force. Now we have an organisation in which all distinctions have gone, and with men and women working equally for the one body …”

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Robert Menzies

Albury Conference, 1944
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Source: http://www.australianquotes.com/quotes_1950-present.php

“The material home represents the concrete expression of the habits of frugality and saving "for a home of our own."”

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Robert Menzies

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.
Radio talk, 22 May, 1942
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)

“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.”

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Robert Menzies

1949 election campaign speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1949-robert-menzies, delivered in Melbourne on November 10, 1949
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)

“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.”

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Robert Menzies

Radio talk, 22 May, 1942
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)

“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.”

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Robert Menzies

Election speech, Canterbury, Victoria, 29 October, 1958 https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1958-robert-menzies
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)

“Our slogan is Australia Unlimited, and we pronounce it with confidence.”

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Robert Menzies

Election speech, Canterbury, Victoria, 29 October, 1958 https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1958-robert-menzies
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)