Reid was neither federal nor anti-federal but either at need and as far as possible both at once. It is difficult indeed to describe so extraordinary… - Alfred Deakin

He was timorous, changeable, inconsistent, erratic, gloomy and absorbed, then sparkling and excitable by turns, his fine face pale and puffy — his fine head rapidly turning grey — his figure growing too portly — his hand trembling, his eye restless, his demeanour that of one who drifted in and out of dreams and some of them bad dreams.

Parkes said of himself and another member that they were alike in that they consistently lived above their means. He was as much an admirer of the fair sex, so that when once on a specially dashing woman appearing in the gallery of the New South Wales Assembly, and Parkes being asked who she was, replied in sardonic style: "Well I don't know myself. I've asked George Reid and Wise, and they don't know, from which I conclude that she must be a woman of good reputation."

... his politics were a chaos and his career contemptible.