Kevin Rudd Quotes

Sorry Day falls on the eve of Reconciliation Week, giving us the chance to ask whether we are making progress in the wider challenge of reconciling Indigenous and other Australians.

I think that there is a basic goodness in the Australian community. I believe there is a widespread and genuine wish and willingness to come to grips with the process of reconciliation. One way of helping is for as many people as possible to join study groups—to study history and learn what Aboriginals have gone through and how they were dispossessed. We're not on a guilt trip here. I'm not on about trying to make people feel guilty. But there needs to be a general acknowledgment of what has happened.

We owe the Aboriginal peoples a debt that is four centuries old. It is their turn to become full partners in developing an even greater Canada. And the reconciliation required may be less a matter of legal texts than of attitudes of the heart.

We all have a responsibility to advance the process of reconciliation, and as a political leader, I am committed to leading from the front and to continue to take bold and significant steps.

You know, Prime Minister Trudeau's got me. His work with First Nations. He's got everybody. He's going to take us where we need to go.

In the last twelve years, we have come some distance towards reconciliation and the breaking down of disadvantage. Let us take encouragement from what has been achieved and set our minds and hearts to end the remaining roadblocks.

The healing of a nation is a slow process that requires patience. It begins with truth telling, the confession of wrong-doing, the genuine respect for forgiveness and the willingness to accept the consequences of one's actions.

I have aimed at a higher object than mere amusement, desiring so to picture the Irish character, as to make it more justly appreciated, more rightly estimated, and more respected in England.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.

I believe we don't need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect.

My dad taught me from my youngest childhood memories through these connections with Aboriginal and tribal people that you must always protect people's sacred status, regardless of the past.

The relationship between the government of the United States and social and indigenous movements has always been difficult. Not just in Bolivia but worldwide. We need to have bilateral relations characterized by mutual respect.

If we dismiss from our minds the prejudice we may have against the Indians we shall be able to more clearly understand the impulses that govern both races.

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.

There is a positive and personal relationship between the Egyptian people and the Syrian people.

I have a great relationship with the Mexican people.

I can get along great with the Hispanics. In fact, I sure would like to meet them, even the politicians, maybe in the back room or whatever, have a couple of beers and try to explain. But they need to understand that I enforce the laws. I want to listen to them and hear their problems. I want them to tell me what their problems are.

Reconciliation does not mean covering history with a blanket. Reconciliation means truth, justice and love. Justice without love can degenerate into vengeance. We need to know the truth for medicinal reasons, so that what happened … will never happen again.

Believing in each culture's right to be understood by the other party without any form of falseness or distortion is paramount.

One can never be certain what is in the mind of the oriental but we must leave the oriental no doubt what is in our mind.

I like to question cultural biases wherever I go, and I question Islamophobia as much as I question anti-western sentiment because I think all extremist ideologies are very similar.

Sometimes our partners from other countries ask us why we have not got further with our reconciliation, as if we possess a magic to just get rid of this tragic history of ours.

When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities - how we treat one another when we are not being stupid - what I find is deeply Aboriginal.

I wish more Americans would travel here. I always encourage my friends: 'Travel. See the Middle East. There's so much to see, so many good people.' And it's vice versa, and it helps stop problems of misunderstanding and stereotypes from happening.