David Lange (1942 – 2005)
Served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989.
"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'."
On seeing a machine labelled "media steriliser", Lange quipped: "Have that sent to my office immediately."
Commenting on the abilities of former National Party leader Jim McLay: "The performance of the leader of the opposition is now frantically, furiously, skitterishly, hopelessly, nervously, disastrously pathetic."
When asked, "Does God help you?": "He's not really in caucus lately."
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.
When asked, "So, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?": "I'm going to be a jockey."
Winston Peters: "the only member of Parliament named after a concrete block, and I can understand that."
...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.
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.
My back is so scar-tissued that you couldn't find a place to slip a knife.
Enquiring about his youngest daughter Edith, a journalist asked "Do you worry about being an old dad?" Lange replied: "No, I worry about being a dead dad."
Death is very, very terminal.
"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."
"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."
He's gone around the country stirring up apathy.
Sir Robert Muldoon: "At last there is a member with a larger stomach than my own."
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.
If the American global strategy is dependent on the ability of nuclear ships to come to New Zealand, then God defend the world.
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."