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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Nick Clegg

Government

Lost

Get

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Nick Clegg

Nation

History

" 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. "

" 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. "

Nick Clegg

One Thing

Morning

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

Nick Clegg

Distance

Curious

" 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. "

" The caricature of what George Osborne is doing on the fiscal side is absurd. If you read some of the commentary, particularly from the left, you would think he was turning the clock back to the 1930s. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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'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. "

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

Nick Clegg

Economic

Market

" 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. "

" 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. "

" What I hope is in five years' time, I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked, but it has worked. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Nick Clegg

Existence

Long

" 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. "

Nick Clegg

Well

Over

" I am a passionate believer in freedom of speech. I would not support anything which would impinge on aggressive robust freedom of the British press, but when things go wrong and there has been outright illegality, there should be proper accountability. "

" 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. "