Ned Kelly Quotes

My mates are all gone; it is a sad affair, but of course it can't be helped now.

I would advise all those who joined the Stock Protection to withdraw their money and give it and as much more to the widows and orphans and poor of Greta district where I have spent and will again spend many happy days fearless free and bold as it only aids the police to procure false witnesses to lag innocent men I would advise them to subscribe a sum and give it to the poor of their district.

Circumstances have forced us to become what we are—outcasts and outlaws—and bad as we are, we are not so bad as we are supposed to be.

If the public do not see justice done I will seek revenge for the name and character which has been given to me and my relations, while God gives me strength to pull a trigger.

Two years ago—even if my own life was at stake—and I am confident, if I thought a man would shoot me—I would give him a chance of keeping his life, and would part with my own; but if I knew that through him innocent persons' lives were at stake, I certainly would have to shoot him.

The Queen must surely be proud of such heroic men as the Police and Irish soldiers as It takes eight or eleven of the biggest mud crushers in Melbourne to take one poor little half starved larrakin to a watch house. I have seen as many as eleven, big & ugly enough to lift Mount Macedon out of a crab hole more like the species of a baboon or Guerilla than a man.

The country belongs to us; we can go anywhere we like.

That charge [stealing over 200 horses] has never been proved against me, and it is held in English law that a man is innocent until proven guilty.

I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also, who have no alternative but to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped, splaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords, known as 'officers of justice' or 'Victorian Police' who some call honest gentlemen but I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying it takes a rogue to catch a rogue.

People who live in large towns have no idea of the tyrannical conduct of the police in country places far removed from court; they have no idea of the harsh and overbearing manner in which they execute their duty, or how they neglect their duty and abuse their powers.

Although I have been bushranging I have always believed that when I die I have a God to meet.

You are committing a manifest injustice in imprisoning so many innocent people, just because they are supposed to be friendly to us. There is not the least foundation for the charge of aiding and abetting us against any of them, and you may know this is correct, or we would not be obtaining our food as usual, since they have been arrested.

I threw big cowardly Hall on his belly I straddled him and rooted both spurs onto his thighs he roared like a big calf attacked by dogs ... I used to trip him and let him take a mouth ful of dust now and again as he was as helpless as a big guano after leaving a dead bullock or a horse.

I wanted to see the thing end.

We will not leave [Victoria] until we have made the country ring with the name of Kelly and taken terrible revenge for the injustice and oppression we have been subjected to. Beware, for we are now desperate men.