R Turnbull Quotes & Sayings

I felt so insufferably alone. I remembered Miss Myra Turnbull telling us once that this desperate need we have to belong to someone goes back to our earliest forebears, the lowest form of animal life, the amoeba, each individual particle of which has to be joined to other particles to make a whole. Then — Madeleine L'Engle

Government will not nominate the former Labor prime minister [Kevin Rudd] to be the UN's next secretary-general. — Malcolm Turnbull

I believe politicians should aim to be accurate and truthful in what they say at all times. You can be truthful and inaccurate but what you shouldn't be doing at any time is saying things that are untrue or making commitments that you have no intention of honouring. — Malcolm Turnbull

Governments enjoying surpluses have a very strong temptation to splash money around, and while tax cuts are always appealing, cutting taxes at the top of a boom runs the real risk of creating a structural deficit when the boom subsides. — Malcolm Turnbull

Wicca offered real, not pretended, means for the individual to express the art, beauty, and reality of ritual, including magic, in the here and now.
Paul Turnbull — Arin Murphy-Hiscock

[On religion:] Wasn't it invented by man for a kind of solace? It's as though he had said, 'I'll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,' and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

What every prime minister struggles with and every leader struggles with is how to balance the two objectives; firstly that of ensuring that all asylum seekers are treated generously and humanely in accordance with the convention and secondly doing everything you can to eliminate or at least discourage people smuggling. And it's a very, very difficult balance. — Malcolm Turnbull

I would say to the people of Queensland, and to all listeners around the country, is that if you want stable government in the next term of parliament, it's not just enough to reelect the [Malcolm] Turnbull government. It's also important to elect a senate which will be able to deal with the important reforms, with the important legislation, in a way in which the senate in the last parliament was unable to deal with. — George Brandis

China and India will take the global leadership on climate change: they are suffering for it. — Malcolm Turnbull

The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly, if that's the best job you can get in terms of money, that's too bad, you know. Because frankly, it's not well paid, everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice. — Malcolm Turnbull

Are not the gays who seek the right to marry, to formalise their commitment to each other, holding up a mirror to heterosexuals who are marrying less frequently and divorcing more often? — Malcolm Turnbull

A garden path,' write the landscape architects Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull, 'can become the thread of a plot, connecting moments and incidents into a narrative. The narrative structure might be a simple chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end. It might be embellished with diversions, digressions, and picaresque twists, be accompanied by parallel ways (subplots), or deceptively fork into blind alleys like the althernative scenerios explored in a detective novel. — Rebecca Solnit

You cannot keep on saying oh, you know, talking about disrespecting women as just being politically correct or it's not a big deal or brushing things off. You've got to be aware of it. — Malcolm Turnbull

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he's the hell of a diplomat. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Those who condemn gay marriage, yet are silent or indifferent to the breakdown of marriage and divorce, are, in my view, missing the real issue. — Malcolm Turnbull

Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect, indifference, cruelty or adultery, to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief. — Malcolm Turnbull

When the desire ain't on me I don't need help. When it is on me I don't want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn't do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody's. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Sure, Malcolm Turnbull is less anti-science and anti-culture than [Tony] Abbott, but low bar, and there's not a lot to show for it beyond rhetoric. — Justine Larbalestier

Design acknowledges change. Its meaning encompasses change in our times. To design is to 'create order and to function according to a plan.' The notion of change and design move along the same path. — Sara Little Turnbull

Anyone who thinks it's smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty. — Malcolm Turnbull

What you've got to do is recognize that you don't control everything for a start, you've got to play the cards you're dealt, the hand of cards you're dealt, as best you can, and that's what I always seek to do. — Malcolm Turnbull

We have a strong and credible broadband policy because the man who has devised it, the man who will implement it virtually invented the Internet in this country. Thank you so much, Malcolm Turnbull. — Tony Abbott

I've been around in public life for a long time. I think people know what I stand for. They know that I have strong convictions, committed principles and I'm prepared to stand up for them. — Malcolm Turnbull

Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

This all comes down to what we know about life on Earth. — Margaret Turnbull

But who knows, some years from now if there's a global emissions trading scheme agreement, as many have hoped for, then I'm sure Australia would be part of it. — Malcolm Turnbull

The new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, while a vast improvement on his predecessor is not doing much, if anything, to slow that process done. — Justine Larbalestier

So the proposition that the ideal parents for any child are its biological parents is a statement with which we can all agree in the generality, but which does not apply, for one reason or another, in many particular circumstances. — Malcolm Turnbull

Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation! ... Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It's the most loquacious of all. You really can't get a word in edgeways. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

There's the occasion when politicians will say things that are simply not true or that they make commitments that they have no intention of fulfilling. That is something that I think should not happen. That's a no-no. That's a third rail that you shouldn't touch. — Malcolm Turnbull