“Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable…unimaginable…unspeakable.”

—  Paul Keating

Speaking in 1992, as quoted in "Ned Kelly and 'Mary Poppins' writer among top Irish-Australians" by Pádraig Collins, in The Irish Times (19 August 2009) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0819/1224252870389.html

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable…unimaginable…unspeakable." by Paul Keating?
Paul Keating photo
Paul Keating33
Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia 1944

Related quotes

“Latin literature would almost certainly have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of the Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

“The Holocaust would have been unimaginable without the Nazi Party; the Nazi Party would have been unimaginable without Hitler; and Hitler’s rise to power would have been unimaginable without the unique circumstances that brought the Weimar Republic to ruin. To hear Goldhagen tell it, mass murder was all set to go: a century-long build-up of eliminationist anti-Semitism simply had to express itself. But the moment when a historian says that something had to happen is the moment when he stops writing history and starts predicting the past.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

Allen C. Guelzo photo

“Culture made the use of the F-bomb on television unthinkable in 1965; 40 years later, HBO would be lost without it.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)

Milan Kundera photo

“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 111
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Three: Words Misunderstood

“For you can't hear Irish tunes without knowing you're Irish, and wanting to pound that fact into the floor.”

Jennifer Armstrong (1961) American children's writer

Source: Becoming Mary Mehan

“The convict system in essence was a form of compulsory, assisted migration. It eased the problems created by Australia's distance from Britain. Without it relatively few people from the British Isles would have made the costly journey across the world in Australia's first half century.”

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

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

John Flanagan photo

“It would be unthinkably bad luck to be betrayed by a rumbling stomach.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Burning Bridge

John Hirst photo

“In Australia the pressure of the Scots and especially of the Irish forced the abandonment of 'English' as the identity of the colonies in favour of 'British'. The Irish of course could still bridle at a British identity even when it included them as equals. In time, with the passing of the first generation born in Ireland and the growth of a distinctively Australian interpretation of Britishness, they were prepared to accept it.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (2005)

Leonard Bernstein photo

“Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Dinesh D'Souza photo

“Imagine the unimaginable… What would the world look like if America did not exist?”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Documentary films, America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)