Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Politics is a highly tribal business.
After the economic 9/11, we will face a new world order.
I am quite strict as a dad but I don't want to be censorious.
[Ed Miliband]'s elevated personal abuse into a sort of strategy
I care more about getting this right [NHS reform] than I do about getting it done.
[All governments] get into a rut where every potentially good story turns into a bad one.
You see people literally in a different galaxy who are paying extraordinarily low rates of tax.
The Liberal Democrats will add a heart to a Conservative government and a brain to a Labour one.
What we should be doing in the EU as a whole is more economic integration in the single market, rather than less.
I'm very lucky. I am one of those people who is able to go home, shut the front door and completely focus on the kids.
Our Sheffield and London homes are worth well over a million but the bank owns most of them - we are mortgaged up to the gills.
The Labour Party has become consumed by collective bile towards... the Liberal Democrats. That portrays a rather nasty arrogance.
I think that the days when newspaper barons could basically click their fingers and governments would snap to attention have gone.
My head spins. One moment I'm told I'm too edgy, then people say I'm too angry, then that I show too much passion... make your minds up.
Every time [Chris Bryant] asks a question I become more and more baffled why anyone would want to hack his phone and listen to his messages
Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.
When I became leader, I made very clear I was not going to choose the easy life. I have always taken risks. I don't like comfort-zone politics.
Do I get up every morning and ask: am I doing the things that I believe in and am I doing them for the best possible motives? Yes. Unambiguously yes.
One thing I've very quickly learned is that if you wake up every morning worrying about what's in the press, you would go completely and utterly potty.
I don't watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I'm reading at the moment 'Freedom,' by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I'm loving it.
We are keen to stress that a strong euro zone is good for a strong United Kingdom. It's not for us to write the changes that the euro zone needs to embark on.
What I hope is in five years' time, I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked, but it has worked.
I firmly believe that the principles behind Contraction & Convergence provide the best long-term framework for a fair and equitable climate change mitigation policy
I've just been away for a week, and I dropped my BlackBerry in the sea while I was messing around with the kids, so no one can reach me. Blissful. I heartily recommend it.
The UK is not going to leave the European Union. Of course not. We are inextricably wound up with Europe. In terms of culture, history and geography, we are a European nation.
With the EU taking in ten more countries and adopting a new Constitution, organisations need more than ever intelligent professional help in engaging with the EU institutions.
Voters tell politicians what they want through the ballot box. Constantly second-guessing them by speculating whether the parties should gang up on each other misses the point.
Growth that lasts does not threaten our children's future. It recognises that our planet is a gift that must be cherished. That tomorrow is our responsibility as much as today.
I don't lead a particularly Bohemian existence. The main criterion for me is not to be judgemental of other people so long as what they do is not harmful or offensive to others.
I say this as a young dad seeing children going into primary school: I don't think we should underestimate the formative effect on a child of those first years in primary school.
You have a political and media elite who have an idiom by which they describe politics. It's highly, highly polarised. It's right, left, red, blue, up, down, victorious, crushed.
If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that.
Joining the Liberal Party was a no-brainer for me... And when you are a young man, you don't get a calculator out saying, 'Am I going to get to power?' You get propelled forward by idealism.
Most of what needs to be changed in the euro zone can be done without treaty changes. The demand for treaty change is as political as it is legal and I don't think it's going to happen soon.
Nothing will do more damage to the pro-European movement than giving room to the suspicion that we have something to hide, that we do not have the “cojones” to carry our argument to the people.
The caricature of what George Osborne is doing on the fiscal side is absurd. If you read some of the commentary, particularly from the left, you would think he was turning the clock back to the 1930s.
We need to teach our kids, because there is such a celebrity culture at the moment, that however rich you are, however famous you are, however glamorous you are, everyone has to live by the same rules.
I think it is a simple statement of principle that in a democracy you should make your MPs work harder for your vote and try and get at least majority support in their local area, and that in a nutshell is what AV does.
I totally accept that it's a legitimate criticism that when you are involved in the day-to-day scrum of government that what can get lost is the narrative, the hymn sheet the song that inspires and lifts people's sights.
If there's one thing I'm not going to apologise for as the leader of the Liberal Democrats in government after 60 or 70 years of being out of government, it's that you just cannot avoid but deal with the world the way it is.
I totally accept that it's a legitimate criticism that when you are involved in the day-to-day scrum of government... that what can get lost is the narrative, the hymn sheet... the song that inspires and lifts people's sights.
Actually, the curious thing is that the more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the more you're examined under a microscope, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayals that people impose on you.
I would be open about the fact that, clearly, politicians should be able to speak to each other. David Cameron doesn't seem to accept this, but if the British people have voted then of course you have to try and provide good stable government.
Liberalism is a really old British tradition and it has a completely different attitude towards the individual and the relationship between the individual and the state than the collectivist response of Labour, and particularly Old Labour, does.
We need to reach out to small 'l' liberal voters who have a modern outlook on life, who want a party that is hard-headed on the economy - more credible on the economy than Labour - but more socially progressive and fairer than the Conservatives.
Grown-up politicians talk to each other across party lines. Over the last few weeks I have had lengthy conversations with Ed Miliband, David Miliband, with Tony Blair, with Peter Mandelson... talking about Europe, talking about political reform.
I am a passionate believer in freedom of speech. I would not support anything which would impinge on aggressive robust freedom of the British press, but when things go wrong and there has been outright illegality, there should be proper accountability.
The choices politicians make must be based on values - not an arbitrary, axe-wielding approach to public spending or a dismal exchange between Gordon Brown and David Cameron about percentages that sounds like an argument between different book-keepers.
We can't return to the 19th century, draw up our drawbridges and say, we don't have anything to do with each other, Germany will not work with the Netherlands, the UK will not work with France. That's ludicrous. We are condemned to work with each other.
Although I am a young leader, I actually came to it strangely quite late. I have a different perspective, partly because of my family, partly because of what I did for ten years: negotiating trade deals, working out in Central Asia doing assistance projects.