I believe [ Rajiv Gandhi] had a real sense that he would be assassinated.
BOB HAWKEAn 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.
More Bob Hawke Quotes
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He said it was very uncomfortable and he often took it off, but of course, in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been wearing three vests – he would have been gone.
BOB HAWKE -
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 -
Geoffrey [Howe] and I were mates, and he disagreed with [ Margaret Thatcher] position. So, we cooperated surreptitiously.
BOB HAWKE -
I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.
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 -
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 -
She [ Elizabeth II] is, you know, “Do-what-you’re-told, Lady”. But in the Commonwealth, she is much more than just a figurehead.
BOB HAWKE -
The world will not wait for us.
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 -
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 -
You’ve got to remember the Cold War was a very real thing then, so the relationship with the United States was very, very important.
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 -
Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.
BOB HAWKE -
Institutions do live on their history.
BOB HAWKE -
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.
BOB HAWKE