David Lange Quotes

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

On Roger Douglas: "He's like rust, he never sleeps."

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."

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

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

My back is so scar-tissued that you couldn't find a place to slip a knife.

Will the United States pull the rug on New Zealand? The answer is no. They might polish the lino a bit harder and hope that I execute a rather unseemly glide across it.

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.

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.

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

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.

Death is very, very terminal.

After a very long year we've got a very short knight.

An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.

We are an enemy of the nuclear threat and we are an enemy of testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. New Zealand did not buy into this fight. France put agents into New Zealand. France put spies into New Zealand. France lets off bombs in the Pacific. France puts its President in the Pacific to crow about it.