I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.
BOB HAWKEI hated [Robert Mugabe]. He’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. He treated black and white with equal contempt. He was a horrible human being.
More Bob Hawke Quotes
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It was Indira Gandhi who very much lined up with the Russians. And she was, you know, within the Commonwealth, basically one out on that.
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The world will not wait for us.
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I said to my people, “We’re knocking apartheid off but we’ve got to be prepared to assist them.” And I sent senior people over there to assist the incoming South African regime to go about the economic plan.
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There was some suggestion that there was a rapprochement developing between China and the Soviets, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
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I believe [ Rajiv Gandhi] had a real sense that he would be assassinated.
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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.
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The personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]… For instance, once she goes – if she’s ever going to die, it seems to be questionable – if Charles [of Wales] were there, whether there’d be the same sort of cement is very questionable, I think.
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The first meeting in 1983 was held in India and I was very off put by her. I just couldn’t abide her, basically.
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I assumed the leadership within the Commonwealth for the fight against apartheid. I was very much assisted by Brian Mulroney, the Prime Minister of Canada, [and] Rajiv Gandhi, when he became the Prime Minister of India. And there were trade sanctions.
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I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, “Come up to Vancouver”, and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, “I think it could work.”
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[Malcolm Fraser] went straight from Melbourne Grammar to Oxford. And he would have been a very lonely person, and I think he probably met a lot of black students there who were also probably lonely.
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Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.
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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.
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I think there are a number of reasons, not least of which is the personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]. It’s very easy to underrate her significance.
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I had a good personal relationship with Lee Kuan Yew and I used him, in the sense, that he… He made a statement in 1980, and he said in that statement that,
BOB HAWKE