R M Williams Quotes

100 R M Williams Quotes (RM Williams, Reginald Murray Williams
1908-2003)

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If you make something good, people will make a track to your door. We made simple things that people wanted and kept them simple.
R M Williams

[On making his first pair of R M Williams boots in 1932] We shaped them from one piece of leather, blocked while the hide was wet, into the shape of a foot. We lined them with fat and wax and the nails were hand-driven.
R M Williams

In a world that is supposedly over-producing I find that good of the better class are still in short supply…
R M Williams

Superior craftsmen in any trade will never be short of work.
R M Williams

I didn't do a Bondy. We didn't produce anything new, just things that were in the Australian tradition - but better and stronger. Beyond the ideas I can't take any credit for the growth of the business. The kids were responsible. I was too busy with cattle and gold.
R M Williams

The sky is still the limit and trees still grow and the seasons come and go and all of the beautiful things we've got around us, they're still here.
R M Williams

[On R M Williams boots] You can screw them up and do what you like. You can't destroy them. We hope they'll wear a long time yet. These boots are made for people who are specialists. People who expect them to last.
R M Williams

Dad had a passion for prancing, matched pairs of light horses – buying them, matching them, training them and then selling them to people who could afford them. The stock he drove was nearly always in the process of being trained. That was his business…
R M Williams

Big, obedient, patient Clydesdales. I loved them.
R M Williams

The way a man rolls his swag tells the discerning much about him. It must be rolled to fit a pack-saddle, the right length, not too bulky, neatly strapped and the canvas clean of burrs. A man becomes very proud of his swag, for in a new camp it is his mark of identification.
R M Williams



We are sculptures in the making…
R M Williams

In this world of opportunity every youngster today could get employment if he or she learned some specialized trade, some skill, some ability.
R M Williams

Privilege is not a right but a reward…
R M Williams

[In the 1930s] I got a muscleman to toughen up my body, and especially thicken my neck, so I could withstand the battering I knew I’d get in life.
R M Williams

'Cowboys' that's American, it means boys who milk the cow - call them 'Stockmen'.
R M Williams

[On Mao Tse-tung] Mao, he had the right idea but just got bushwhacked.
R M Williams

It's a long hard struggle from nothing to something if you're starting off with nothing, especially if you're raising a family.
R M Williams

When you're living in the bush as a child, there's no television or no telephone…
R M Williams

One piece of leather moulded to make a boot, instead of a lot of pieces…
R M Williams

We finished up making a pair of boots and they were quite unique…
R M Williams



Bush boots being made by a bushman for bushmen.
R M Williams

[On the products he makes] It's got to last a long time.
R M Williams

I think it's very important that we should pass on to our future generations… the things we've learnt.
R M Williams

We're slightly more honest, we're a little more honourable, I hope, and we have a national feeling of pride in being Australians…
R M Williams

A man must look to the muddy pit wherefrom was taken the clay that moulds him.
R M Williams

[On returning to the country] I went back to where I belonged.
R M Williams

The adventure that might be encountered in any life that keeps as guidelines the rules governing the human spirit.
R M Williams

No man can judge before the end.
R M Williams

My father’s people were Welsh, and the oppression of the burdened miners also shaped my genes.
R M Williams

Expediency has marked the road down which I have walked to dubious success, and always the pirate, the rebel, has shouted his advice over my shoulder while the faintest of lights pointed out a dim way.
R M Williams



[In Adelaide] I was born here on 24 May 1908, in the coldest part of the State, at the start of a particularly cold winter that registered ten heavy snowfalls between June and September.
R M Williams

Dad’s home was more of a depot for his operations than a farm or a station. His life was centred on the horse business. He stabled his horses in a long open-fronted building with pillars. There were no stalls for them, just a long trough at the back where the stable was attached to the barn.
R M Williams

Life, as I came to know it, revolved round feeding the horses, preparing them for work and making the implements they were to haul. Horses pulled wagons; they hauled the wool and the wheat and the merchandise. They had to be shod, and the harness and other equipment kept in repair.
R M Williams

The smithy was also used for welding. Everything was hot-welded in those days; there was no such process as oxy-welding.
R M Williams

In those days if you came by landau with four horses and a coachman you were royalty. Two horses pulling a carriage of sorts proclaimed you gentry. By buggy and pair you were landed folk. By single harness and sulky no bells announced you but at least you were not walking. The long-shafter brake my father drove was the mark of a horseman but not easily classified…
R M Williams

I was two years old when Dr Aiken drove into the district in his new Renault, the first automobile in the district…
R M Williams

Land was bringing six shillings an acre, travelling dentists charged a shilling an extraction – but in Caltowie the local draper pulled them out as a free service to customers.
R M Williams

Sunday should be a day of rest? Dad did manage to stop the waste of a day. He would make church day the day for taking out the colts, and I noticed that he always washed them down carefully and handled them before he put them away. On Sundays the buggy too had a cleaning that other days did not warrant.
R M Williams

[On his father] He was a man of another age, really, holding a set of values that differed in essence from those that most men hold today. The son of a pioneer settler, he grew up believing along with most of the men of his world that a man’s physical strength was his measure.
R M Williams

[More on his father] And the life demanded strength. Hay had to be carried from the fields, heavy horses broken to harness, heavy wheels had to be mended and tyred with steel. Any wagon wheel weighed enough to need four men to lift it. Any four-bushel bag of wheat weighed more than two hundredweight (100 kg). Men of his breed worshipped strength.
R M Williams



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