David Lange Quotes

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

To US Ambassador H. Monroe Browne, who owned a racehorse called Lacka Reason: "You are the only ambassador in the world to race a horse named after your country's foreign policy."

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

Lange was hosting a reception at Vogel House for the Chinese politician Hu Yao Bang when the lights went out. Lange immediately asked all the guests to raise their hands because "many hands make light work." The audience complied, and to their amazement the lights immediately came back on. Lange was invited to visit China.

An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.

I wouldn't call the Prime Minister gutless. That's all that's left of him.

I've got two shirts still missing from the Bahamas. I'm sure they are part of a youth camping programme somewhere in Tanzania by now.

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.

...a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism.

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."

On a trip to Germany, Lange and his entourage were climbing the tower of an ancient castle when they stopped to catch their breath. "How old is this ruin?" someone asked a guide. "Forty-two years," said Lange.

Greens are not expected to be anything but nice.

...an economic ignoramus unfit to oversee a fifty-cent raffle.

...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.

He's gone around the country stirring up apathy.