Clegg Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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. — Nick Clegg

Every time [Chris Bryant] asks a question I become more and more baffled why anyone would want to hack his phone and listen to his messages — Nick Clegg

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

love can be the most enthralling of demons. 3 — Douglas Clegg

Let my daughter remember that in view of her age she should always help her brother with the advice that her greater experience and her affection may suggest, and let them both remember that in whatever situation they may find themselves they will never be truly happy unless united. Let them learn from our example how much consolation our affection has brought us in the midst of our unhappiness and how happiness is doubled when one can share it with a friend - and where can one find a more loving and truer friend than in one's own family? — Melanie Clegg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Nick Clegg

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

It's funny to think that the wind has a shape but it does. It becomes visible every once in a while - in rain being driven to the ground in sheets, or in the snow on the fields behind our house. I remember looking out the window of my room in the winter, watching the wind blow on the surface of the white fields, lifting and whipping the snow into spirals, and in a flash you could see the force that was always there come to life and reveal itself. I think it is this way with children and parents. They are always there and then suddenly through some shock or disappointment or great gesture or obscene the child sees this person who was there all the while - invisible to them beyond their function to provide. — Bill Clegg

Pain is a ritual we all must endure." 2 — Douglas Clegg

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

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

Back in 1999 and 2000, a few of us ... a very few of us ... Douglas Clegg, Seth Godin and I ... offered free electronic copies of our books in an effort to reach an audience we otherwise wouldn't have reached and to test out a new marketing concept for books. Despite the industry screaming we were crazy, it worked. — M.J. Rose

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

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

Death is a gift, so long as it is nature's hand. — Douglas Clegg

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

The Liberal Democrats will add a heart to a Conservative government and a brain to a Labour one. — Nick Clegg

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

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

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

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

All we can do is play our parts and keep each other company. — Bill Clegg

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. — Nick Clegg

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

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

Of the things that are man's achievements, the greatest is suffering. — Douglas Clegg

Family is putting up with each other's shit sometimes I guess. — Douglas Clegg

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

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

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

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will. — Nick Clegg

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

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

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

Some people, she decided, magically surface in these horrible moments knowing exactly what to do, which spaces to fill. — Bill Clegg

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

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

You see people literally in a different galaxy who are paying extraordinarily low rates of tax. — Nick Clegg

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

When you see someone every day for a while, you settle into a rhythm and you come to count on them even if for nothing more than the fifteen minutes each morning they spend sitting at your counter, on one of your stools, talking about the weather and giving you a big smile and thumbs-up when they sink their teeth into a poppy-seed muffin. — Bill Clegg

Sometimes, they wait. Sometimes, you see the dead come in to the harbor, and their old dogs are all along the docks, wagging their tails, for they have waited for their masters and mistresses for many years. You see mothers who have missed their sons. Fathers who had never spoken of love to their children, ready to embrace them as they voyage from the end of life. It shows the lies of this world, you see. We are wrong about so many things here. Mankind has done terrible things, yet we are forgiven. — Douglas Clegg

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

[Ed Miliband]'s elevated personal abuse into a sort of strategy — Nick Clegg

Who had been fighting with someone they loved?
Going at it long enough to unleash the irretrievable words they knew to say only because they had been trusted to know what would hurt the most. — Bill Clegg

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

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

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

I care more about getting this right [NHS reform] than I do about getting it done. — Nick Clegg

Besides, back to the subject of you being nuts, all writers are nuts, didn't you know that? — Douglas Clegg

Wounds can sing a beguiling song. — Bill Clegg

Old Marsh wore a look of sorrow upon his face. You called him, miss. You called him. You must send him back now. You must send him back. He won't be the brother you remember. It ain't his spirit comes back. I told you that. It's the soul of death comes back, that's what it is, miss. The soul of death in disguise like your brother. Only the one who called him can send him back. I saw the bird in the cellars, in the bowl, miss. I know what you done. I know what you called. — Douglas Clegg

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

This is the pivot between youth and age, the
thrilling place where everything seems visible, feels possible, where plans are made. On the one side you have childhood and adolescence, which are the murky ascent, and, on the other, you have the decline that is adulthood, old age, the inch-by-inch reckoning of that grand, brief vision with earthbound reality. — Bill Clegg

This is a half-life, a split purgatory where her body and mind coexist but occupy separate realities. — Bill Clegg

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. — Nick Clegg

There are monsters in the world. They're called human beings. - Michael Diamond, from The Life Beyond — Douglas Clegg

1. YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS
Youth is a cliff. You leap, and repair the broken bones later.
When you're older, you draw the map, retrace your steps and find the cliff's edge again to wonder:
Would anyone ever jump if they knew how far down it went?
I jumped, once.
I'm broken in unseen places. — Douglas Clegg

It is more magnificent than what I thought heaven might be, and yet it is all of its wonder, as well."
...
"Iris, we are shut off from it in this life because if any knew its magnificence, life itself would end, for all who are living would seek death. But as the egg must be in the nest for the bird to fly from it, so the living must live and die when nature intends so that the shell may be broken at the point when the living have wings to fly. It is as if in life we are blind, and in death we see. In life we think in error, but in death we know and love and understand. — Douglas Clegg

Words could kill, sometimes, he thought then. Words could change everything. Lourdes — Douglas Clegg

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

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

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

He put his hand over my mouth. His hand felt warm, full of blood, the hand of a living man. "Death is a gift, so long as it is nature's hand. But this," he drew his hand away, and nodded toward the dead man in the grass. "When we are called back unnaturally, Death demands a price, for there is always a balance. If I am alive, then someone else must die before his time. This is what you have done. But he is the lucky one. He is at peace. I know what awaits him, and I envy him. — Douglas Clegg

I never felt so small, so humbled, by the vastness of the universe and the fragility of life. — Bill Clegg

She found Lucy to be about as interesting as a toothache. — Douglas Clegg

I think that the days when newspaper barons could basically click their fingers and governments would snap to attention have gone. — Nick Clegg

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

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

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

The world's magic sneaks up on you in secret, settles next to you when you have your head turned. — Bill Clegg

It's a cruel, crazy, beautiful world. — Johnny Clegg

I saw him as the supplier of my life. In a dream, in a hole, I saw the great snake of life, devouring its own tail. Life eats life, the image of the snake seemed to tell me. Life devours itself. You are part of this, and so is Gup. The snake is the whip in my father;s hand. The whip is in my hand and reaches from my bloodied back to whip my father's hand. The torturer and the tortured are each playing a part and cannot be without the other. — Douglas Clegg

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

Victory is freedom of mind and body.' I believe that is true. I would go further and say that victory is freedom of mind from body. Separation from the thing that imprisons us. Flight. Perhaps freedom from life itself. That is victory. Life is brutal. It is like this whip and these ropes. It hurts. It scars. But we must take it. — Douglas Clegg

Louis Maistros has an original and dark vision, full of power. — Douglas Clegg

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. — Nick Clegg

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

[W]e've learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it. — Bill Clegg

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

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

[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

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

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. — Nick Clegg

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

After the economic 9/11, we will face a new world order. — Nick Clegg

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. — Nick Clegg

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

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

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. — Nick Clegg

He was a golden boy in a world of brass and tin. — Douglas Clegg

Politics is a highly tribal business. — Nick Clegg