Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Menzies

There is a small, lethal elegance in Menzies's phrasing: a rebuke that pretends to be a shrug. "Considering the company I keep in this place" is not just a complaint about colleagues; it is a carefully staged act of self-positioning. He casts the surrounding political environment as morally or intellectually suspect, then steps aside from it as if he were merely an unwilling bystander trapped among lesser men. The sting lands in the restraint. He never names the offenders, which makes the insult portable: it can apply to an opponent, a hostile press gallery, even an entire chamber.

"That is hardly surprising" does double work. On the surface, it lowers the temperature, suggesting calm reasonableness. Underneath, it weaponizes inevitability. Whatever has happened - misrepresentation, defeat, scandal, bureaucratic obstruction - is framed not as a reflection on him but as the predictable output of a degraded ecosystem. The implication is: if you want better outcomes, stop expecting them from these people.

As a statesman, Menzies understood that politics is theater with consequences, and this line plays to both. It reassures supporters by implying he is above the fray, and it pressures fence-sitters by inviting them to share his disdain. The sentence is also a defensive maneuver: it preemptively discredits criticism by blaming the room. In a parliamentary culture where reputation is currency, Menzies spends almost none of his own while quietly devaluing everyone else's.