If you decide to run for the leadership, you have to go through it with the people you love. But you also have to protect them and I am determined to protect my mum.

In the end, human history is made up of all our decisions.

Consuming three planets' worth of resources when in fact we have one is the environmental equivalent of childhood obesity - eating until you make yourself sick.

John Major put the 'er' back into Conservative, David Cameron's put the Con into Conservative - and Norman Lamont put the VAT into Conservative!

I've committed myself to serve my constituents in South Shields and I have committed myself to British politics.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

Everything about my politics has been about the future.

We know from history that the way wars are concluded is absolutely the key to whether or not there is any peace to be kept.

I'm a great believer in the Arsene Wenger school of management - which is, you don't worry about the opposition, you just get your own act together.

I don't think I've ever been accused of being faddish. I'm more Marks & Spencer than Ted Baker.

We are a European nation - must stay one.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

Your life is a picture of the decisions and choices you have made in the past, and your future depends on the quality of the decisions you make today and tomorrow.

What worries you, masters you.

Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.

No two stories are the same. They may seem the same at first glance, but, once you take a closer look, give the story some of your time, you realise its unique qualities.

...you are not what you seem - you're a Sylph - you leave and the air retains your image - you haunt me...

Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That's success.

The strong manly ones in life are those who understand the meaning of the word patience.

The people who live in the past must yield to the people who live in the future. Otherwise the world would begin to turn the other way round.

I really believe that the past is beyond our grasp and what is essential about the past is something unspeakable.