Top 100 Clegg Quotes
#1. If Nick Clegg hadn't been sitting around the cabinet table, we wouldn't have had the bedroom tax; we wouldn't have had the rise in tuition fees. We wouldn't have had the mistakes we've seen in economic policy.
Douglas Alexander
#2. Clegg, Miliband, Farage resigning (rumours that they are to be the new Top Gear line-up cannot be confirmed at this time).
Charles Stross
#3. have to talk to Mr West. I'm sure he'll be able to help you.' 'We'll do that, Mrs Clegg,' replied Fitzjohn. 'Now, I don't want to keep you too much longer but Mr Van Goren arrived at the Observatory last evening in a taxi so I take it he didn't
Jill Paterson
#4. I don't think my life would be significantly poorer if I don't impersonate Nick Clegg. Life is short enough without sitting up night after night listening to tapes of him.
Rory Bremner
#5. Judgement is often no more than a confession of ignorance.
Bill Clegg
#7. 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.
Nick Clegg
#8. You know, my basic theory about kids: they are monsters in children ziploc suits, which they discard when they go to school each day.
Douglas Clegg
#9. There is more terror in a day of life than there is at the moment of death. It is as if a door has opened to a prison, though you do not believe it is a prison while you exist within it.
Douglas Clegg
#10. All we can do is play our parts and keep each other company.
Bill Clegg
#11. I am quite strict as a dad but I don't want to be censorious.
Nick Clegg
#12. There are monsters in the world. They're called human beings. - Michael Diamond, from The Life Beyond
Douglas Clegg
#13. I think that the days when newspaper barons could basically click their fingers and governments would snap to attention have gone.
Nick Clegg
#14. 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.
Nick Clegg
#15. What we should be doing in the EU as a whole is more economic integration in the single market, rather than less.
Nick Clegg
#16. 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.
Nick Clegg
#17. You know we got two lives, sometimes more. I don't mean like reincarnation, I mean like we have our life of innocence and then it rams right into the real life. The life where innocence is just a mirror - looks nice, reflects a lot, but it ain't the real thing. I
Douglas Clegg
#18. 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
#19. Nothing within the limits of the human imagination and mind is impossible. If it were, we could not imagine it or dream it.
Douglas Clegg
#20. I genuinely believe that we will look back on today as a landmark for equality in Britain ... No matter who you are and who you love, we are all equal. Marriage is about love and commitment, and it should no longer be denied to people just because they are gay.
Nick Clegg
#21. This is a half-life, a split purgatory where her body and mind coexist but occupy separate realities.
Bill Clegg
#23. Everything can work out fine if you just plant your feet on the ground and look straight ahead. Nothing is a tragedy unless you buy it a suit of clothes and give it a free meal.
Douglas Clegg
#24. Do I get up every morning and ask: am I doing the things that I believe in and am I doing them for the best possible motives? Yes. Unambiguously yes.
Nick Clegg
#25. Grown-up politicians talk to each other across party lines. Over the last few weeks I have had lengthy conversations with Ed Miliband, David Miliband, with Tony Blair, with Peter Mandelson ... talking about Europe, talking about political reform.
Nick Clegg
#26. And if the only thing you can do is show up, do it. Then do it again. And when it's the last thing you want to do and the last place you want to go, go. Just go. You have no idea who you might be helping just by sitting there or who might help you.
Bill Clegg
#27. 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.
Nick Clegg
#28. 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.
Nick Clegg
#29. She found Lucy to be about as interesting as a toothache.
Douglas Clegg
#30. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes their way. Happiness only happens for those who cry and those who hurt, for only then can they appreciate the importance of people who touch their lives.
Douglas Clegg
#31. 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.
Nick Clegg
#32. 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.
Nick Clegg
#33. It was said that Mrs. Campusky's ovaries were like popcorn poppers and the desert heat kept her puffing up with a never-ending pregnancy.
Douglas Clegg
#34. 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.
Nick Clegg
#35. 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
#36. Of the things that are man's achievements, the greatest is suffering.
Douglas Clegg
#37. I would be open about the fact that, clearly, politicians should be able to speak to each other. David Cameron doesn't seem to accept this, but if the British people have voted then of course you have to try and provide good stable government.
Nick Clegg
#38. 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.
Nick Clegg
#39. 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.
Nick Clegg
#40. And the stories will change and the canoe will become a headboard and the family will be mermaids and the rooms will be mansions. And no one will remember us, who we were or what happened here.
Bill Clegg
#41. 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.
Nick Clegg
#42. I never felt so small, so humbled, by the vastness of the universe and the fragility of life.
Bill Clegg
#43. Death is a gift, so long as it is nature's hand.
Douglas Clegg
#44. You see people literally in a different galaxy who are paying extraordinarily low rates of tax.
Nick Clegg
#45. 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.
Nick Clegg
#46. 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
#47. 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.
Nick Clegg
#48. For a while the world will appear more as it is and less as I make it, and I will have a new courage to face the remaining wreckage of the past.
Bill Clegg
#49. Death has a price, and all who bargain with the dead must pay it.
Douglas Clegg
#50. 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.
Nick Clegg
#51. I think it is a simple statement of principle that in a democracy you should make your MPs work harder for your vote and try and get at least majority support in their local area, and that in a nutshell is what AV does.
Nick Clegg
#52. Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.
Nick Clegg
#53. The Liberal Democrats will add a heart to a Conservative government and a brain to a Labour one.
Nick Clegg
#54. 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.
Nick Clegg
#55. 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.
Nick Clegg
#56. Do you know that when a man becomes old, he begins to remember what he believed in as a child and it all comes back to him?
Douglas Clegg
#57. [Ed Miliband]'s elevated personal abuse into a sort of strategy
Nick Clegg
#58. What was unspeakable found voice and its bleating froze the air for a moment hacked from the fabric of time as the secret of all stabbed at his ears.
Douglas Clegg
#59. OK, I say again, not really understanding what it is I am agreeing to, what it is precisely I am accepting. But I am accepting something. The truth of my circumstances? The reality I have until now avoided? It's much worse than I imagined and also somehow better.
Bill Clegg
#60. Frailty and cruelty are our gifts to the world. Who is to say that suffering is not the greatest of all gifts from the gods?
Douglas Clegg
#61. With the EU taking in ten more countries and adopting a new Constitution, organisations need more than ever intelligent professional help in engaging with the EU institutions.
Nick Clegg
#62. Death is not the end of things, my sister. It is the beginning of a greater adventure than this small life you cherish can hold. And beyond these shores of death, there are great ships that fly from the golden seas to the skies of pearl.
Douglas Clegg
#63. He was a golden boy in a world of brass and tin.
Douglas Clegg
#64. [W]e've learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it.
Bill Clegg
#66. 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.
Nick Clegg
#67. We kill, kill, kill. Flesh, spirit, whatever gets in our way. It's like our whole purpose is to extinguish life. And for those who live, there's memory, like a curse. We're such a mixture of frailty and cruelty.
Douglas Clegg
#68. The world's magic sneaks up on you in secret, settles next to you when you have your head turned.
Bill Clegg
#69. 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.
Nick Clegg
#70. 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.
Nick Clegg
#71. Mommy loves me I know. Mommy loves me I know. I know Mommy loves me. I am scared of her. A
Douglas Clegg
#72. I've never been one to go to church, but I've al was ways believed in a creative intelligence behind the ongoing riddle of the world.
Bill Clegg
#73. 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.
Nick Clegg
#74. [A]s a parent you just have no idea what anything means. On some level everything your kids do and say is in code.
Bill Clegg
#75. 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.
Nick Clegg
#76. If you want to lose sleep at night and eliminate all your free time or freedom, by all means open a small business, especially one that serves food.
Bill Clegg
#77. If only ... the two most miserable words in the English language. If only.
Douglas Clegg
#78. Louis Maistros has an original and dark vision, full of power.
Douglas Clegg
#79. 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.
Nick Clegg
#80. I understood, then, where his madness had come from: He, too, had experienced the loss of the good and the victory of the evil.
Douglas Clegg
#81. After the economic 9/11, we will face a new world order.
Nick Clegg
#82. 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.
Nick Clegg
#83. 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.
Nick Clegg
#84. The Labour Party has become consumed by collective bile towards ... the Liberal Democrats. That portrays a rather nasty arrogance.
Nick Clegg
#85. 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
#86. 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.
Nick Clegg
#87. God was like the phone company: You paid your bill, and sometimes you got cut off anyway.
Douglas Clegg
#88. Politics is a highly tribal business.
Nick Clegg
#89. I firmly believe that the principles behind Contraction & Convergence provide the best long-term framework for a fair and equitable climate change mitigation policy
Nick Clegg
#91. There are no words precise enough to describe how wide and empty the world is when you lose someone that matters to you as much as Penny did to me.
Bill Clegg
#92. 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.
Nick Clegg
#93. the one of insane geometries, of orange lightning, of fire that rained from trees like leaves falling, of the birds rising from the water their impossibly pure white wings spreading across the burning sky. As
Douglas Clegg
#94. Family is putting up with each other's shit sometimes I guess.
Douglas Clegg
#95. 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.
Nick Clegg
#96. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day.
Bill Clegg
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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.
Nick Clegg
#100. Skinless creatures swayed in death throes from thick, silver hooks. Beneath them, on the turquoise mosaic floor, rows of buckets overflowed with clotting blood.
Douglas Clegg
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