An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.
BOB HAWKEAnd that’s what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.
More Bob Hawke Quotes
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I don’t know who described Mahathir [bin Mohamad] as a pillar of the Commonwealth, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.
BOB HAWKE -
While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed.
BOB HAWKE -
Brian Mulroney, myself, [and] Rajiv Gandhi; I think that was the real core [of the Commonwealth ]. That was the engine room, I reckon.
BOB HAWKE -
I think she finds the Commonwealth and her position as Head of the Commonwealth infinitely more interesting than being the Queen of England, because she has no significant role in the latter.
BOB HAWKE -
The world will not wait for us.
BOB HAWKE -
I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.
BOB HAWKE -
And it did seem to me that one way that we could bring the apartheid regime down would be if we did mount an effective investment sanction.
BOB HAWKE -
Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.
BOB HAWKE -
The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.
BOB HAWKE -
I got to know him well as Vice President to Ronald Reagan. And George rang me up and said, “Oh, Bob,” he said, “I’m having trouble with Brian [Mulroney].” He said, “He’s got a big wheat trade with Iraq, and he doesn’t want to upset that.” I said, “You leave it with me.”
BOB HAWKE -
And that’s what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.
BOB HAWKE -
Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable.
BOB HAWKE -
There was some suggestion that there was a rapprochement developing between China and the Soviets, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
BOB HAWKE -
Nor will they perceive the distribution of wealth and resources between nations to be unalterably ordained by heaven and incapable of drastic rearrangement by the less than gentle manipulation of man.
BOB HAWKE -
There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn’t have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement.
BOB HAWKE






