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" We are keen to stress that a strong euro zone is good for a strong United Kingdom. It's not for us to write the changes that the euro zone needs to embark on. "

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" 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. "

Nick Clegg

Political

Fairness

Tradition

" 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. "

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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'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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

Nick Clegg

You

Saying

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" I will not accept a new wave of fiscal retrenchment, of belt-tightening, without asking people at the top to make their contribution, to make an additional contribution. I don't think you can ask people on middle and low incomes, who, after all, are the vast majority of the British population, to bear the brunt of this adjustment. "

" 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. "

" The Conservative Party is not honouring the commitment to Lords reform and, as a result, part of our contract has now been broken. Clearly I cannot permit a situation where Conservative rebels can pick and choose the parts of the contract they like, while Liberal Democrat MPs are bound to the entire agreement. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" Tony Blair and Gordon Brown committed to John Major's spending envelopes in 1997. No-one said that Tony Blair and John Major were identical. This happens quite often that parties actually, despite all the sound and fury, agree on the overall need to make sure that we live within our means as a country. "