David Lange Quotes

Our nuclear free status is a statement of our belief that we and our fellow human beings can build the institutions which will one day allow us all to renounce the weapons of mass destruction. We are a small country and what we can do is limited. But in this as in every other great issue, we have to start somewhere.

Our nuclear free status means that we decline to acquiesce in the strategies of nuclear deterrence. We will not turn a blind eye to them, and pretend that the weapons are no longer a threat. We will not in any way tolerate the testing of nuclear weapons, or their manufacture, or their deployment.

We cannot by ourselves reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, but we are doing what has to be done all over the world if those weapons are one day to be eliminated. We will not contemplate any circumstance in which their possession or threatened use is justified. We reject the secrecy and hypocrisy which surrounds the continuing refinement of the technology.

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.

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.

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.

Greens are not expected to be anything but nice.

Today's Schools are not Tomorrows Schools. That's a fundamental misconception.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Death is very, very terminal.

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

New Zealand’s nuclear free movement is a broad-based and popular movement. Our nuclear free status is a challenge to much that is accepted as orthodox in international relations. It was formally adopted in the cold war era as a form of resistance to the dismal doctrines of nuclear deterrence. It is still a rebuke to the unprincipled exercise of economic power and military might.

An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.

I think more than anything, that's when I decided politics was on.