Paul Keating Quotes

If I finish my term in office … and have high approval ratings, then I wasted my last years in office. That high approval rating means you don’t upset anybody. High approval rating means you’re skiing down the slope and you never fall. Well, you’re skiing the baby slope, for goodness’ sakes. Go to a steeper slope. You always want to press, and you want to tackle the issues that are unpopular, that nobody else will go after.

It's a rarity when someone takes a political risk in Washington today in the public interest.

You accumulate political capital to spend it on noble causes for Canada. If you're afraid to spend your capital, you shouldn't be there.

I admire people who come to politics because it takes a lot of courage to be in politics in India.

That's the thing about Lionsgate. They are fearless. No other studio would have made 'Hunger Games' the way they did. They're being fearless in the way they make decisions, and it's paying off for them.

Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.

If everyone played it safe, we wouldn't get anywhere.

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.

If you are going to take the political pain of slaying sacred cows, you might as well slaughter the whole herd as just go after one or two.

Political leaders will never take risks unless the people push them to take risks.

You cannot lead this country by being [politically] safe.

I saw a complete lack of courage in Washington to tackle some of our biggest challenges.

I always take bold moves. So it can have great return but with great risk.

I didn't get into politics so that I could take little bites around the edges.

I think there's a danger in politics of being too risk-averse.

Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built. Politics isn't just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

I don't look at me taking risks or if that's going to affect me politically.

Shun the incremental and go for the leap.

Any time you risk big you often risk losing big. You can win big but you can also lose big, but you have to be willing to take those risks.

I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.

It's sort of easy to make a challenge. It's very hard to put the full fate of your government behind the challenge and make it happen. That's real leadership.

In this life, you have to risk big to win big.

We're going to think big, we're going to bet big.

You'll always see me doing things that I have no business doing. Whether it's directing a major motion picture or meeting with the most important people in government and dealing with the biggest subjects on Earth. The story of the millennia. These are things I aspire to tackle. It doesn't mean I'm going to win on all of them, but God damn, it looks like I've got a pretty good shot at it.

If you live cautiously, your friends will call you wise. You just won't move many mountains