On the show we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables we are not trying to get people to become Democrats. We are basically trying to encourage people to get involved with public life so that politics isn't left to the wealthy and privileged.

I will go to the next election saying to Australians vote for me vote for the Liberal Party and I will become your PM. So I'm offering myself as the alternative PM - that's one way people describe the Leader of the Opposition - but I'm not in politics for myself to realize a personal ambition.

Thus the focus on this main political goal must become more visible in EU politics and to achieve this we need a political impulse. It must be clear what the priorities on the agenda are.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

Would that the simple maxim that honesty is the best policy might be laid to heart that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

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.

But I'm not interested in politics. I lose interest the microsecond it ceases to be emotional when something becomes a political movement. What I'm interested in is emotions.

Once you start saying 'Let's talk political my own politics my own aspirations ' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time but it can become confusing and frustrating and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda.

It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.

The precise point at which a tax deduction becomes a 'loophole' or a tax incentive becomes a 'subsidy for special interests' is one of the great mysteries of politics.

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.

The message that I gave on the - on the steps today was that you need to stand for those things that are right and empower the individual. Believe in the power of one person. Don't believe that you can't do it. Everybody wants - everybody wants a shot. That we can all agree on. Beyond that it becomes politics. I'm not talking politics.

Because politics rests on an irreducible measure of coercion it can never become a perfect realm of perfect love and justice.

Politics is the diversion of trivial men who when they succeed at it become important in the eyes of more trivial men.

When governments become large voters cannot exercise close oversight otherwise known as political power.

A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot.

In order to become the master the politician poses as the servant.