Alexander Downer Quotes

I don't care how popular I am. I'm not putting myself out there to run for higher office.

I see myself a humble man, and I tell you I have no ambitions to be president.

It is a most certain truth, that the richer we see ourselves to be, confessing at the same time our poverty, the greater will be our progress, and the more real our humility.

Too many actors have run for office. There's one difference between me and them: I know I'm not qualified.

I'm not the No. 1 starter. I'm not the guy that's going to carry the staff for four months out of the season, but I can contribute in a lot of ways. And to me I'm very proud of that.

I grew up thinking that if I wanted to go be prime minister, I could.

When I was 14, I told all the girls in my class that I wanted to be the first woman prime minister. Someone else beat me to that!

I understand what my gift is, which is making people laugh, hopefully. It's more on that level. I don't need to be a leading man, I'm fine with that.

I appreciate the idea that anybody would think of me as a star. But I'm really not career oriented in the sense that I want to be a star. It's not in me. It's not what I do. In fact, I'm amazed that I've even gotten this far.

Turning one's back on stardom might be the highest form of common sense. One that I would aspire to be more complete with.

I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy.

Yeah, well I'm not aspiring to be the Prime Minister.

Of course I'd have loved to be Prime Minister. But I'm not nursing a grievance.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

I have sacrificed everything in my life that I consider precious to advance the political career of my husband.

It wouldn't kill me if I were never nominated or elected to anything.

If I don’t get elected? Great. The Republic will live on

I want to be prime minister.

You don’t have to humiliate yourself to show some humility.

It was flattering to have high expectations, but I was never going to be President.

A great man is always willing to be little.

I don't look in the mirror and see a president of the United States. I don't have that ambition.

One day, when I have advertising out of my system, I want to be Prime Minister of Australia.

There is little doubt that, until 1846 when he helped to engineer the resignation of Robert Peel, Disraeli was driven by an ambition to make his mark rather than by any consistent political purpose, and that his attacks on Peel would have not have been so mounted had he been given in 1841 the office for which he had asked.

Our very business is to teach the great lesson of self-denial and humility to our people, and how unfit is it then that we should be proud ourselves!