I deeply detest social distinction and snobbery, and in that lies my strong aversion to titular honours.
Fortunately New Zealand doesn’t have land borders so we are able to be somewhat more rigorous on who gets in and out of our country than perhaps some people.
I have no beliefs of a religious kind.
I think that generally New Zealand is respected for the positions it takes because it thinks them through.
We just sent our condolences to the President of the United States and the American people on what is a terrible, terrible tragedy.
If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with the neglect the market fosters.
I think the issue of North Korea is one where the international community as a whole has to work to resolve the crisis.
Economic growth which strips out the planet’s ecosystems is not sustainable.
In the end, there will always be a fundamental difference of perspective between New Zealand and Australia on defense, whoever is in government.
It’s fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.
In terms of having views and being prepared to express them, yes, I think New Zealand’s had a leadership role in a lot of things.
Nihilists expend everything and everyone except themselves. They are the indispensable men, without whom the world might try to live almost happily.
The mind is more vulnerable than the stomach, because it can be poisoned without feeling immediate pain.
Life to most Greeks may be either tragic or comic or a mixture of both; but one thing it never is – and that is, meaningless.
Just remember enough never to be vulnerable again: total forgetting could be as self-destructive as complete remembering.
Expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed.
And it’s the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy.
Inquisitive people aren’t really very attractive, are they?
Civilization is a perishable commodity.
The sad discovery of the adult world was the permanent truth: you don’t always do what you want to do; you do what you must.
Men who use terrorism as a means to power, rule by terror once they are in power.