Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is clearly important for all leadership candidates to be open and transparent about their tax affairs. I was very happy to publish mine today, and hope others will follow suit.
The key for members of the public is that they want criminals to be punished. They want them taken off the streets. They also want criminals who come out of prison to go straight.
I decided I don't want to go for the top job now. I could be working for another 25 years and I'd like to be reading bedtime stories to my children for another two or three years.
The political classes are despised when they deal in sound bites, embrace tokenistic campaigns and feather their own nests while trying to please all of the people all of the time.
Of course Meghan Markle wasn't driven out of this country by racism. It is a ludicrous claim and symptomatic of how ridiculous the must-be-offended-at-all-costs brigade has become.
Secularism has no central goal, it's just promoting endless relativism. That's why there is a huge moral drift in the country. Everybody is infallible except the Pope, if you like.
If I pleaded guilty to a mistake while I was home secretary, it wasn't that I didn't get tough - my God, I put immigration and security officials on French soil for the first time.
Many single mothers do a heroic job looking after their children, as mine did with us; but as she found, it becomes twice as hard to set boundaries with half the number of parents.
Stories come and go. The challenge is to frame the questions that voters will be asking on polling day, such as who has avoided a global depression and worked here to deliver jobs.
Tony Blair will be remembered for nothing other than that he followed George W. Bush over a cliff; took the rest of us with them, and we haven't yet reached the bottom, I'm afraid.
I came to declare that I am a friend to Arabs, at a time when it is not easy to be friend to Arabs, because nowadays those who have ambitions and interests would not befriend Arab.
Spare me this sanctimony about politeness, please. There are millions of people in this country who hate the very word 'Thatcher' and 'Thatcherism,' which continues until this day.
I will have failed in this if in five years there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It is a tall order but I want you to hold me to it.
The whole point of politics is to stay in touch, to be relevant to modern problems, to offer people relief from current worries, to give them hope based on contemporary experience.
Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and scores of nations all making their way in the world.
I found reading Alan Bennett striking because you have this sudden flash of recognition when you read about a boy who has intellectual interests utterly different from his parents.
I hesitated, too, because for better or worse, I have been one of the principal architects of New Labour and I have worked closely with Tony Blair and the team for nearly 20 years.
People have to make journeys, what we want is people to have alternatives in public transport so that they can make a choice about the sort of way in which they're going to travel.
If I'm serious about patients and their GPs being able to have more control of their health care, I can't have a top-down system that imposes restrictions on the services they need.
The reasoning for our civil-military plan is that lasting success will be when the Afghan government, security forces and people can resist the insurgents and terrorists themselves.
Britain is a European power. We cannot change our geography. Our involvement in the politics of European cooperation is one of necessity. Our wealth and our security depend upon it.
The typical prisoner has numerous brushes with the law before finally being sent behind bars. Each year thousands of cautions are issued to people who will come back to crime again.
Some pretty senior young individuals in and around the Cabinet should share the responsibility for talking up an election and referring publicly on the radio to where the risk lies.
I have never solicited nor received money from Iraq for our campaign against war and sanctions. I have never seen a barrel of oil, never owned one, never bought one, never sold one.
The former pension minister, the Liberal Democrat Steve Webb said I was trying to abolish the lump sum. Instead, we are going to keep the lump sum and abolish the Liberal Democrats.
Only the U.K. can trigger Article 50. And in my judgement, we should only do that when there is a clear view about what new arrangements we are seeking with our European neighbours.
The thing that worries me more than anything else is losing faith in the capacity of politics to change things. I don't mean scepticism, criticism, querying, but I do mean cynicism.
An eminent American is reported to have said to friends who wished to put him forward, 'Gentlemen, let there be no mistake. I should make a good president, but a very bad candidate.
When a company owns one precise thought in the consumer's mind, it sets the context for everything and there should be no distinction between brand, product, service and experience.
Given that we are passing the climate change bill, which is based on the supposition that the climate is getting warmer, let me point out that it is now snowing outside, in October.
During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year.
I want to make it clear that the lobbying sector does an important job. It is very useful to the government to hear the views of a broad range of groups to make sure we get the best.
My heroes are the non-commissioned officers. If I had another life that's what I'd be - a regimental sergeant major or a similar rank. That's where the spirit of the armed forces is.
In foreign policy, there are times when speaking with one voice - and it doesn't have to be mine - allows us to engage better on issues, and enables us to do things more effectively.
As I have consistently recommended, we desperately need to find more black judges, particularly females, who are chronically underrepresented in our courts across London and the U.K.
Newspapers can make their own judgment in terms of who they support in a general election. Our responsibility is to make a considered judgment about where the national interest lies.
There is a shortage of teachers but the January 2001 schools census showed that teacher numbers were at their highest level than at any time since 1984 - and 11,000 higher than 1997.
There are those who are trying to create an anti-business culture in Britain - and we have to stop them. At stake are not pay packages for a few but jobs and prosperity for the many.
The rapid dissemination of technology and information offers entirely new ways of production, but it can also bring the spectre of more states developing weapons of mass destruction.
There is really quite an inherent danger in the traditional British view that the council of ministers and inter-governmentalism is your protection against the federalist superstate.
Work is transformative. It gives you a greater chance of a greater income. You can affect your life while you're of working age, so you have scope and opportunity. Pensioners do not.
The E.U. referendum is a major watershed in U.K. history. It will be important for the future of the Conservative party. It will be even more important for the future of our country.
There's unrecognizable change happening in Britain. The life prospects and job prospects, particularly of working-class people, have been severely dented. Without anyone being asked.
It is virtually impossible for what you are voting on to remain as it is currently. There could be huge changes to the treaty and there could be huge changes to the euro zone itself.
In my experience of these things, parties which shout about dirty tricks and the like tend to do so because they fear a direct hit in some vulnerable part of their political anatomy.
The Conservative Party has one overriding concern in foreign policy, and that is the growth of Communist power and influence in the world, and the dangers it can bring for all of us.
I believe a strong NATO has been the bulwark of our defence in Europe. Obviously that's important in the UK national interest and I believe it's important in the US national interest
The U.K. courts were very clear that Abu Qatada posed a threat to our national security - that's why we were pleased as a government to be able to remove him from the United Kingdom.
People feel that the EU is a one-way process, a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided at that level.
Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable, because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents.