David Lange (1942 – 2005)
Served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989.
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.
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."
I wouldn't call the Prime Minister gutless. That's all that's left of him.
Of his political colleagues: "If you took the glasses off some of them they'd be rendered dumb."
While at a Cabinet retreat in Fiji the menu for the day was explained, "You can get Chinese food all day, however if you want anything else you'll have to make a specific order." Lange quipped, "So it's Wok around the clock?"
Of Michael Bassett: "A man who could eat a banana sideways".
...an economic ignoramus unfit to oversee a fifty-cent raffle.
On Roger Douglas: "He's like rust, he never sleeps."
After a very long year we've got a very short knight.
Reacting to news that he had retained his Mangere seat in the 1990 election with a provisional majority of 3366: "Well, my majority might be of some interest to students of the Book of Revelation. It's thirty-three sixty-six."
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.
Asked about the Security Intelligence Service by an opposition MP, he responded: "I can understand the member's desire to have a passing connection with intelligence which seems to have by-passed him all his life. He has kept his secret for years."
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."
"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."
Greens are not expected to be anything but nice.
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.
An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.
...a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism.
Our military forces are an arm of government, just like the Department of Social Welfare, although probably less able to inflict widespread harm.
To a journalist who asked: "Prime Minister, can we go back to Ruatoria for a moment?": "Certainly, goodbye."