We calculate the amount spent [by Brethren and other anti- Green groups] was between $500,000 and $1 million - that's a huge amount for a state election campaign in Tasmania.

The government's living in its own cloud cuckoo land and it's a cloud of greenhouse gases.

We people of the Earth exist because our potential was there in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, as the universe exploded into being.

There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.

I am aware that one should always make room for renewal in politics. A democracy is the healthier for the turnover of the depth of talent there is in its community.

The overarching factor to me is if we can't be kind to each other, we won't be kind to the planet.

Australia must prioritise education spending. It is not a question of whether or not we have the money, it is a question of how we choose to spend it.

Real life security and contentment come not from putting a gun in the cupboard, but from taking a role in the world's future.

The reality is that if we in this rich, lucky quarter of the planet cannot make a stand for the 30 million other species we share this planet with, let alone our own species, then who can?

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

“When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”

“Good wine is a necessity of life for me.”

“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.”

“A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

“I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”

“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.”

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.”

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”

“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.”

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.”

“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

“Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.”

“Be polite to all, but intimate with few.”

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.”

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.”

“Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.”

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.”

“An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.”

“I cannot live without books.”