Quotes By Nick Clegg

For far too long the world's poorest people have seen no benefit from the vast natural resources in their own backyards. It is time to end the injustice where ordinary people are silent witnesses, left to suffer without basic services, as the profits from their countries' assets are hidden and plundered by corrupt regimes.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Liberal Democrat Party and the Conservative Party come at things very differently when it comes to Europe. When it comes to political reform, we have a much greater tradition in the Liberal Democrats of social justice and fairness than the Conservatives do.

I am quite strict as a dad but I don't want to be censorious.

We have got to make sure there is proper independent scrutiny and accountability for people in the press, just as there should be in any other industry where things go wrong. But let's not try and think it is for politicians or governments to tell people what they stick in newspapers. That is deeply illiberal.

What we should be doing in the EU as a whole is more economic integration in the single market, rather than less.

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.

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.

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 have got instincts that, I think, are very much in tune with people's very keen sense to see something different. I did not dream of being in politics since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I was not involved in student politics, or not in that partisan way.

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.

The British political system and the whole clapped out Westminster architecture, and the language that we use about politics, it's completely unsustainable. You either decide to be part of that transition to do something different. Or you cling to old certainties.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

Politics is a highly tribal business.