David Lange Quotes

On seeing a machine labelled "media steriliser", Lange quipped: "Have that sent to my office immediately."

He viewed humour as a relaxing introduction to many situations. "It is, of course, completely inappropriate in some... but in the end, you know, if you were serious in this job you'd go mad."

...it all happened so quickly you got a lot of bewilderment; you get a lot of people who are basically meat-and-three-veg quarter-acre New Zealanders who find themselves eating dim sims with chopsticks and they can't cope.

Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father's side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him.

Our military forces are an arm of government, just like the Department of Social Welfare, although probably less able to inflict widespread harm.

Death is very, very terminal.

The statement which has been made by the Leader of the Opposition was that the intelligence has stopped. I don't know whether that was a personal confession or whether it was a statement of position.

He had more on his mind than his mind could hold.

Winston Peters: "the only member of Parliament named after a concrete block, and I can understand that."

If the American global strategy is dependent on the ability of nuclear ships to come to New Zealand, then God defend the world.

I often write about the period and I do so with wistfulness rather than triumph. It is a period which was absolutely significant in New Zealand's history. It was a period which was calling out for the government we had in 1984 to 1987 and it was a chance where the social richness of New Zealand could have been enhanced because of its economic wealth and where instead the obsession for money overran any form of political, social, human sense.

Once while waiting at Auckland airport, Lange insisted on buying himself a newspaper and joined a queue at a newsstand. The woman in front of him turned around and said, "Good God!" Lange replied affably, "No madam, you are mistaken. I have never made that claim."

An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.

When asked, "Does God help you?": "He's not really in caucus lately."

a man whose life is so boring that if it flashed past he wouldn't be in it