Walter Nash's advice to a would-be MP

Advice given in September 1935 by Walter Nash MP (1882-1968), who at the time was the member for Hutt, but who a few months later became Minister of Finance in the first Labour Government of New Zealand, a role he held for 14 years. Nash also later served as New Zealand's 27th Prime Minister, leading the one-term second Labour Government from 1957 to 1960:

• Cultivate Self-Control and determine to follow the urge for right purposes without giving too much thought to the consequences for yourself.
• Cultivate the habit of thinking. Do not be satisfied with ready made opinions either from books or newspapers. 
• Study so that you have some reasonable knowledge of the purpose of Life...
• Remember that while you have thought out the subject you are speaking about, the other person's thoughts are worth examining and they may be right.

- Quoted in Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations, Auckland, 1988, p.496.