"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"He who reads widely and ponders deeply builds an unshakeable inner citadel. Let this simple maxim guide your daily deeds — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Creativity is seeing what everyone has seen, but thinking what no one else thought. Let this simple maxim guide your daily deeds — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought."

"Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age."