Top 10 William Keith Hancock Quotes at QuotationFun

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Intolerance of oppression and sympathy with the underdog are among the most attractive features of the Australian character.

Australia, 1930.

Politics, Patriotism

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Were it possible to compel the prison warders of this past age to produce for our inspection a 'typical' transported convict, they would show us, not the countryman who snared rabbits, but the Londoner who stole spoons.

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Australia has been too much glorified by simple patriots, who imagine that civilisation started with the voyages of Captain Cook, and too much vilified by splenetic tourists of the English middle classes, who fail to find in Tumburumba the mild amenities of Tunbridge Wells.

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Only in metaphor can we speak of situations being 'good' or 'bad', 'ugly' or 'unkind'. It is no use arguing with situations. They will not blush if you reprove them, or turn over a new leaf if you plead with them. The only thing you can do with them is to understand them. They are, says Croce, identical with the means at your disposal. Understanding the concrete facts of particular situations is therefore the first task of sound historical judgement, as it is the first task of cool statesmanship. It is sometimes called a sense of reality.

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For good and for ill, Australia has had forced upon her the inheritance of all ages. The continent has been peopled by a civilisation ready-made; the British have imposed themselves upon it with their barbed-wire and railways and commercial journalism and modern liberal ideas. Their advance resembles the forward scattering of a horde, and sometimes, like the onrush of a horde, it has been devastating.

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Finding our own way' through History is both a search for fuller content, and, simultaneously, a search for surer standards of right judgement.

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The Australian soldier has frequently been admired for his personal independence and individual initiative. The Australian voter has been continually blamed for his lack of initiative and for his excessive dependence on the State. Unless we are to assume that the fighters have not voted and the voters have not fought, we must seek some explanation of these contradictory reputations.

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One hundred years ago Australia was still a gaol. Some of her greatest cities are less than a century old. The poets have seen truly that Australia's life is in the future. It may extend through European centuries; it may be short. Australia lies opposite an awakening Asia. She shares a civilisation whose destiny is beyond prediction.

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Australian democracy is genuinely benevolent, but is preoccupied with its own affairs. From time to time it remembers the primitive people it has dispossessed, and sheds over their predestined passing an economical tear.

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The most critical moment in the history of a man or a nation comes when the hard facts of present reality penetrate and tear the tenuous envelope which encircles that imagined world of perfect harmony and colour which a poetic vision creates and loves.

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