Harold Holt Quotes

On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me – first that Australia could just lose a Prime Minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.

Yet there was a lightning that shot out of her now and then, which seemed the sign of a dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more admirable than Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman should not see this.

Look Tony, what are the odds of a prime minister being drowned or taken by a shark?

I agree with John Holt that the true test of intelligence is not what you know or can regurgitate from memory on an exam. It’s not what you know how to do, but “what you do when you don’t know what to do.” Harold Gardner has convincingly shown that we have eight or nine different kinds of intelligence. Unfortunately we only measure literacy and mathematical intelligence for our IQ.

with the Minister for Immigration, Harold Holt, and the head of his department, Heyes, who said the department would ‘be very willing to co-operate’, but the defectors needed to have ‘satisfactory’ health, be of ‘reasonable age’, be prepared to take whatever work was offered and should come to Australia as full fare-paying passengers in British ships.60 Subsequently, on 15 May