David Lange

"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."

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

"I agreed with the prevailing opinion in the Labour Party about nuclear weapons; I went on ban-the-bomb marches in the 1960s and I have not changed my mind about nuclear deterrence since. But I found it hard to accept the Labour Party’s policy that required the exclusion of nuclear-powered ships. Given that nuclear energy exists it is the intention behind its use that matters. The weapons are made to destroy and we have to learn to live without them. The rest may be useful if properly managed. The management is an environmental issue and the inevitable exclusion of nuclear-powered vessels was not an appropriate basis for our foreign policy."

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

"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."

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

"Death is very, very terminal."

"They couldn't, in the National Party, run a bath and if either the deputy leader or the leader tried to, Sir Robert would run away with the plug."

"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."

"An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones."

"After that, whenever I drove past Mangakahia, I would empty my ashtray — and I was a heavy smoker in those days — on the road outside the hall."

"Greens are not expected to be anything but nice."

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

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

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

"When asked, "So, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?": "I'm going to be a jockey.""

"And I'm going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment … I can smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me."

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

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

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

"He's gone around the country stirring up apathy."

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

"What a friend we have in cheeses."

"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.""

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

"...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."

"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.""

"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.""

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

"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."

"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 went in a round of the Domain on Saturday morning in a rally car. At the start of it, I was asked if I felt scared. I said, 'certainly not, I have been working with Roger for years'."

"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."

"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."