People From Sydney

"I think that's the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your own potential."

"That's the wonderful thing about democracy: you can hold public office legitimately while still being despised by 49.9 percent of the suspicious eyes on the street."

"OK, Jasper. Here it is: The world's not falling apart imperceptibly anymore, these days it makes a loud shredding noise! In every city of the world, the smell of hamburgers marches brazenly down the street looking for old friends! In traditional fairy tales, the wicked witch was ugly; in modern ones, she has high cheekbones and silicone implants! People are not mysterious because they never shut up! Belief illuminates the way a blindfold does! Are you listening, Jasper?"

"That's the problem with people who suffer right in your face. They can't so much as scratch their noses without its being poignant."

"In truth, his speech made an impression on my mind so deep, a surgeon could probably still make out the grooves. And not just because it planted a seed that would eventually make me distrust any feelings or ideas of my own that might be viewed as spiritual, but because there's nothing more distressing or uncomfortable to look at than a philosopher who's thought himself into a corner. And that was the night I first got a good, clear look at his corner, his terrible corner, his sad dead end, where Dad had inoculated himself against having anything mystical or religious ever happen to him, so that if God came down and boogied right in his face, he'd never allow himself to believe it. That was the night I understood he was not just a skeptic who doesn't believe in a sixth sense, but he was the über-skeptic, who wouldn't trust or believe in the other five either."

"Watching them watching us, I wondered if they had the slightest clue what to expect in Australia. I supposed they knew they'd be living an underground existence, exploited in brothels, factories, building sites, restaurant kitchens, and by the fashion industry, who would get them sewing their fingers to the bone. But I doubted they were aware of the adolescent competition among political leaders to see who had the toughest immigration policies, the kind you wouldn't want to meet down a dark alley. Or that public opinion ws already set against them, because even if you're running for your life you still have to wait in line, or that Australia, like everywhere, excelled in making arbitrary distinctions between people seem important."

"And now everyone returning from an armed conflict is called a hero too. In the old days you had to commit specific acts of valor during war; now you just need to turn up. These days when a war is on, heroism seems to mean 'attendance.'"

"Whenever I'd heard anyone say "Relationships are work," I'd always scoffed, because I thought relationships should grow wild like untended gardens, but now I knew they were work, and unpaid work too - volunteer work."

"I'm only sorry I was born three-quarters through this self-inflicted tragedy and not at the very beginning or at the very end. I'm fucking sick of watching this tragedy in slow motion. The other planets aren't though - they're on the edge of their suns. The reason we've never had visitors from outer space isn't that they don't exist but that they don't want to know us. We're the village idiots of all the teeming galaxies. On. quiet night you can hear their cackled laughter. And what are they laughing at? Let me put it this way: humanity is the guy who shits in his own pants and then walks around saying, 'So, do you like my new shirt?'"

"Dad always mentioned that people don't go on journeys at all but spend a lifetime searching for and gathering evidence to rationalize the beliefs they've held in their hearts since day one. They have new revelations, certainly, but these rarely shatter their core belief structure - they just build on it. He believed that if the base remains intact, it doesn't matter what you build on it, it is not a journey at all. It is just layering. He didn't believe that anyone ever started from scratch. "People aren't looking for answers," he often said. "They're looking for facts to prove their case.""

"When people think your days are numbered, they're really very nice to you. It's only when you're trying to get on in the world that they bring their claws out."

"They could learn that my skin was being peeled away by a blind cook who had mistaken me for a giant potato, and they would cheer. Cheer! It seems that in our society Christianity has made permanent inroads in the eye-for-an-eye department but has made little progress on the practical application of forgiveness."

"Career criminals and philosophers have a surprising amount in common - they are both at odds with society, they both live uncompromisingly by their own rules, and they both make really lousy parent figures."

"No, why air every ugly, negative, loopy, idiotic thought that floats through the head? That's why when you're standing by the harbor and your lover says, in a tender embrace, "What are you thinking about?" you don't respond, "That I hate people and I wish they'd fall down and never get up." I'm telling you. You just can't say it. I don't know much about women, but I do know that."

"My family story is not uncommon in our country. Australians quietly going about their lives with simple, decent, honest aspirations. Get an education. Get a job. Start a business. Take responsibility for yourself, support others. Work hard. Deal with whatever challenges come your way."

"As a liberal democracy, we’re also committed to promoting universal values like human rights, gender equality and the rule of law. We’ve always believed in these values, it’s what makes us who we are."

"these children are ready to deliver their moral verdict on the people and institutions who knew all about the dangerous, depleted world they would inherit and yet chose not to act. They know what they think of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Scott Morrison in Australia and all the other leaders who torch the planet with defiant glee while denying science so basic that these kids could grasp it easily at age eight."

"This is coal. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared. It won't hurt you."

"Heads of state, people in power, were there face to face with Morrison, imploring Australia to care that their nations might disappear soon-and he flat out refused. Instead, he chose to perpetuate the ongoing imbalance of emissions that has led to the current injustice, with those who did the least to create the crisis bearing the worst burden."

"We must respect and harness the passion and aspiration of our younger generations, we must guard against others who would seek to compound or, worse, facelessly exploit their anxiety for their own agendas. We must similarly not allow their concerns to be dismissed or diminished as this can also increase their anxiety. What parent could do otherwise? Our children have a right not just to their future but to their optimism."

"The Indo-Pacific is where we live. It is where we have our greatest influence and can make the most meaningful impact and contribution. It is the region that will continue to shape our prosperity, security and destiny. It is the region where, together with our allies, and especially the United States, our people made great sacrifices when our peace was threatened."

"One piece of good news is that, in the May 2022 Australian elections, Scott Morrison and all his coal-loving friends lost their seats in government, largely due to waves of organized people frustrated with climate inaction."

"Morrison is a horrible horrible person."

"That's not my job."

"Ukraine and Australia are separated by half the Earth. Our languages, accents, histories and cultures are different, but we share an affinity for democracy, for freedom, freedom of speech, expression and a free press. For the right to live free of coercion, intimidation and the brute fist of force. And a belief in our shared human dignity."

"I did not shit myself in Endagine McDonalds."

"Bitterness can often produce all sorts of slings and arrows and attacks. I know where they've come from. And bitterness can always produce this. I've been around politics a long time, and people, when they've had disappointments, whether they be in preselections or in decisions, can often remain bitter for many, many years."

"We face the spectre of a transactional world, devoid of principle, accountability and transparency, where state sovereignty, territorial integrity and liberty are surrendered for respite from coercion and intimidation, or economic entrapment dressed up as economic reward. This is not a world we want - for us, our neighbours or our region. It’s certainly not a world we want for our children."

"We know that if we can support developing economies to embrace and use the technologies that achieve net zero emissions, and see their economies grow and increase their jobs, that is not only wonderful for those economies and their peoples, but it also is good for Australia. We know that their success will also be our success."

"None of us want conflict. We want peace and stability. But nor do we want the very world order that underpins our freedoms to be eroded for fear of giving offence, in the vain hope that concessions will ameliorate the determination of those who seek to intimidate and coerce."

"I don't hold a hose, mate."

"Ultimately, this appointment is not about me; it is about Jesus Christ, and about how we, as living members of the body of Christ, bring him to the world by the way we live out our baptismal vocation with love."

"The future of our society depends upon our ability to discriminate between good and evil, right and wrong and what is or is not acceptable behaviour for our society. The notion of discrimination needs to be rescued from the shadows and restored as a positive virtue to be sought and prized. Forms of unjust discrimination based in prejudice and denial of human rights need to be identified and penalised as inappropriate attitudes and behaviours."

"'[The media] promoted hoaxes that Hamas beheaded babies and carried out mass rape, in order to shore up support for Israel, and distorting events.'"

"There are around 35,000 sanitation workers in Mumbai. Of these, some 28,000 are and 7,000 are hired on contract. Permanent sanitation workers have their basic working conditions protected by law. They are provided with uniforms, payment slips, medical insurance, and paid leave. Contract workers have none of these benefits. As migrants, they do not have ration cards or permanent housing either. Most of them live in unauthorised shanties that are frequently demolished, which forces them to periodically search for a new spot to build their homes again. It is not uncommon for the work of permanent employees to also be subdivided among contract workers. After years of persistent ground-level organising, the movement has come closer to the abolition of the system of subcontracting, which has made sanitation work one of the most dangerous, precarious, and dehumanising jobs in India today."

"All of the contract workers employed by the are Dalits, who are migrants. [...] Several sanitation workers [...] are forced to leave their homes in rural areas in search of work because of drought conditions, which are becoming worse each year. The two main areas they come from are in Maharashtra, and Salem and in Tamil Nadu. They are often landless, or unable to make a living from the small plots of land they own. [...] The wages for contract workers are barely enough to survive on, and many of them are malnourished. They collect garbage with their bare hands, without hand gloves, facemasks, shoes, or a uniform. There are no facilities at the work stations for employees to wash their bodies. [...] The workers suffer from various illnesses because of the poor working conditions and often die at a young age. Tuberculosis and other lung diseases are common due to the kinds of gases they are exposed to and the conditions they work in. There are frequent accidents."

"The fasces pledged national unity above all; each of the sticks represented a sector of society, organically bound into the corporate system. No class, gender, regional or other form of division could weaken a Fascist state, locked together as it was, a proletarian nation, needing to end subjugation by the plutocratic, established, great powers, in a Darwinian struggle of the national fittest; one Italian people, one Fascist state, one Duce at the head."

"Bolshevism [Mussolini] knew, was not really a Jewish phenomenon and the manifestations of anti-Semitism in current-day Hungary could not be applauded. Yet, he reckoned, such responses should not astonish. Even in Italy, where ‘anti-Semitism is unknown and we believe will never be known’, Zionism was a troubling development. It was to be hoped that ‘Italian Jews continue to be smart enough not to encourage anti-Semitism in the only country where it had never been.’"

"To the dismay of some ras, Mussolini suddenly announced that he wished to frame a deal with those socialists who might be willing to treat, especially with their trade unionist wing, end the social war burning through the countryside and, by implication, look to the formation of a grand coalition of new mass parties and organizations in order to overthrow the liberal system, be it embodied in parliament in Rome or in the institutions of civil society."

"If ever a word was in the air, then in Italy around the time of the First World War, it was ‘Fascist.’ Fascista, Fascismo, Fascio: each turned up on numerous occasions and in diverse settings. Doctor deputies, endeavouring to be a pressure group, formed themselves into a Fascio Medico Parlamentare as early as 1906."

"In 1919 a nationalist general concluded bitterly that, when confronted by the ‘test of war’, Italy had demonstrated that ‘no one governed it.’"

"In 1918 [Mussolini] had coined the slogan: ‘the man who never changes his mind… is a blockhead’… None the less, this early Fascism did often sound radical, even ‘socialist’, in everything except its foreign policy and reading of contemporary history (both in Italy and in Russia). In June of 1919, for example, the fasci maintained that they wanted the voting age lowered to eighteen (Mussolini had frequently talked about youth bringing zest to anything Fascists might do)… Other initial fasci aims were the institution of an eight-hour day, minimum pay, participatory democracy on the factory floor and improved state insurance for workers. Landowners should be obligated to cultivate their land and any fields that were not utilized productively should be handed over to peasant cooperatives, with a preference for those run by returned soldiers… The fasci favoured progressive tax and the punitive review of war contracts and profits, as well as the seizure of the goods held by religious houses."

"Mussolini exhibited a cynical skill at rewarding his enemies and rebuking his friends."

"Whereas once the movement had flirted with feminism, now Mussolini required that female organizations focus on charity, ‘to the exclusion of any political action which must be left exclusively to the party."

"Syndicalist A.O. Olivetti maintained, the Fascist state had invented the economic system surpassing both socialism and liberalism. Its first clause ran: ‘the Italian nation is an organism having a purpose, life and means of action superior to those of any individual or groups who are part of it.’"

"In June 1914 the newshound Mussolini was to the fore in playing up the social disturbances known as ‘Red Week’, at the peak of which revolutionaries, stirred up by the socialist conference at Ancona in April, attempted full-scale insurrection. As a historian of Liberal Italy portrayed it evocatively: ‘Local dictators proclaimed republics, the red flag was hoisted above town halls, taxes were abolished and prices reduced by decree, churches were attacked… landlords’ villas sacked, troops disarmed and even a general captured."

"At the next socialist party congress, held in July 1912 at Reggio Emilia, the PSI again split, the most vehement attacks on the three moderates coming from the young ‘maximalist’ or radical, Benito Mussolini, who soon took over the editorship of the party’s paper Avanti! from Claudio Treves, another reformist, and, later, for good measure, fought a duel against him."

"Mussolini was, of course, not the only dissident ever to leave a socialist party, especially during the trauma of the First World War. In many countries, the great conflict demanded that a choice be made between the ideals of internationalist socialism and those of the nation."

"As the elections were being held, he published in Gerarchla a disquisition on Machiavelli. He had, he remarked, just re-read the Florentine writer's corpus, although, he added modestly, he had not fully plumbed the secondary literature in Italy and abroad. Machiavelli's thought was, Mussolini announced, more alive now than ever. His pessimism about human nature was eternal in its acuity. Individuals simply could not be relied on voluntarily to 'obey the law, pay their taxes and serve in war'. No well-ordered society could want the people to be sovereign. Machiavelli’s cynical acumen exposed the fatuity of the dreams of the Enlightenment (and of Mussolini’s own political philosophy before 1914)."

"A historian tabulated 16 rival groups who, earlier in 1919, had been using the word fascio to describe themselves. Ranging from anarchists to restless bourgeois university students, these ‘fascists’ had nothing in common except their name."