Top 30 Nick Clegg Quotes

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.

The Labour Party has become consumed by collective bile towards… the Liberal Democrats. That portrays a rather nasty arrogance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Politics is a highly tribal business.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I don’t even pretend we can occupy the Lib Dem holier-than-thou, hands-entirely-clean-and-entirely-empty-type stance. No, we are getting our hands dirty, and inevitably and totally understandably we are being accused of being just like any other politicians.

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.

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.