David Lange Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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.

David Lange
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.

David Lange
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.

David Lange
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."

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

David Lange
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.

David Lange
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.

David Lange
... 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.

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

David Lange
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.

David Lange
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.

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

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

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

David Lange
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."

David Lange
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.

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

David Lange
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'.

David Lange
We ended up being run very similarly to a Polish shipyard.
On the Muldoon government

David Lange
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."

David Lange
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.

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

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

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

David Lange
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.

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

David Lange
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.

David Lange
An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.

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

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

David Lange