David Lange (1942 – 2005)
Served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989.
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.
On seeing a machine labelled "media steriliser", Lange quipped: "Have that sent to my office immediately."
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."
What a friend we have in cheeses.
If the American global strategy is dependent on the ability of nuclear ships to come to New Zealand, then God defend the world.
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.
Sir Robert Muldoon: "At last there is a member with a larger stomach than my own."
He's gone around the country stirring up apathy.
"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 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."
Death is very, very terminal.
"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'."
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."
When asked, "Does God help you?": "He's not really in caucus lately."
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."
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.
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.
My back is so scar-tissued that you couldn't find a place to slip a knife.
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."