The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly if that's the best job you can get in terms of money that's too bad you know. Because frankly it's not well paid everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them and have the honesty to say to people 'There are no easy solutions here.'

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues the populists the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

I became active in politics because I saw the possibility if we all sat back and did nothing of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole an empty place and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London.

There will be no politics no ifs and buts if we see something and feel that work needs to be done we will get people here we can rely on and ensure it is done in the same thorough way as our other projects.

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously equally there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable.

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative too conventional. Too safe too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later too often on the back foot.

Regardless of Bill Clinton's politics or personal life he grew up in obscurity and was elected to the presidency - twice. Don't take that away from him because then you take it away from every other kid in America sitting out there in a school bus with a big dream.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power unrestricted and unregulated armaments international anarchy and preparation for war.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

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.

We need to dig deep and give people a reason to be optimistic just as Obama is doing in America. Because in the same way that outcome of the U.S. elections will change the course of events there and around the world so too do politics here in Britain.

Look there ought to be politics in politics.

There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

If there is one eternal truth of politics it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.