Quotes By Nick Clegg

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.

Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.

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.

If the euro zone doesn't come up with a comprehensive vision of its own future, you'll have a whole range of nationalist, xenophobic and extreme movements increasing across the European Union. And, frankly, questions about the British debate on EU membership will just be a small sideshow compared to the rise of political populism.

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 didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very, very key ambitions in politics, not least social mobility and life chances, that I care about as passionately if not more.

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.

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.

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.

Most people in this country are very fair-minded; they understand we're in the middle of a very difficult journey of repairing, rescuing, restoring our British economy, and they want us, and they want particularly Liberal Democrats in government, to fight for the fairest possible way of doing that.

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.

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.

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.

I wish more people knew that the only one of the three main parties where not a single MP flipped from one property to the next, and not a single MP avoided capital-gains tax, where every single London MP did not claim a penny of second-home allowance, was the Liberal Democrats.

One of the big changes in politics has been because families, individuals, have felt worried, insecure... worried about the economy, worried about their jobs, worried about their kids' futures... actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people's everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller.

My dad's side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There's an emotional, quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It's very open, it loves art, it loves music, it loves literature. It's very warm, it's very up, it's very down. I would celebrate that.

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.

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.

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.

I don't want to clip on the armour every morning. I've seen some politicians do this and they get a bit mangled and bitter. I just refuse to do that. I refuse to be angry or bitter or complain, and I remain open. I may sometimes be a bit too open but I'm not going to change that one bit.

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 Conservative Party is not honouring the commitment to Lords reform and, as a result, part of our contract has now been broken. Clearly I cannot permit a situation where Conservative rebels can pick and choose the parts of the contract they like, while Liberal Democrat MPs are bound to the entire agreement.

One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming, cleaning, modernising our clapped-out system.

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.

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.

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.

I think that the days when newspaper barons could basically click their fingers and governments would snap to attention have gone.

You've got some very powerful countries: Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and others who have a genuine desire to see the euro zone straighten itself out. It's good for all of us, whether you're in the euro zone or not, to make sure that it doesn't lead to a fracturing.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown committed to John Major's spending envelopes in 1997. No-one said that Tony Blair and John Major were identical. This happens quite often that parties actually, despite all the sound and fury, agree on the overall need to make sure that we live within our means as a country.