#lib

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

#become #care #chances #democrats #electoral

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

#any #being #dirty #even #getting

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

#avoided #claim #democrats #did #every

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

#apologise #avoid #being #cannot #deal

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

#below #freedom #keys #liberalism #makes

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

#calculator #forward #get #going #i

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

#civil #civil liberties #continues #democrats #essential

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

#country #democrats #difficult #doing #economy

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

#been #bound #broken #cannot #choose

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. ↗

— Robert Green Ingersoll

#attack #because #creeds #crime #dangerous