Nick Clegg Quotes

Useful lessons can be learned from our more successful local authorities - as you move into government, it is even more imperative to communicate speedily and persuasively with your members and your voters.

How many watched the President's speech last night? [half-hearted audience applause] How many watched American Idol ? [thundering applause] Okay, there you go! You get the government you deserve.

I think most people realize that our problems are our government, not me and you individually, except that we can - must have some sort of responsibility, because they're in there and they were elected, so we have to defend ourselves on those lines.

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example.

What's wrong is that we are not participating to make this the type of government it needs to be.

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

In Iran, people are free to express their views. Every day, some people criticize the policies of the government.

Our future cannot depend on the government alone. The ultimate solutions lie in the attitudes and the actions of the American people.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.

It is no longer appropriate for me as an American to sit by and expect my government to get it done.

Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.

The young in this country, and you fellows are young by my reckoning, have a right to be concerned about the course that our government, the Federal Government, is taking under President Bush.

Men at a distance, who have admired our systems of government unfounded in nature, are apt to accuse the rulers, and say that taxes have been assessed too high and collected too rigidly.

This is not just our battle. It is an issue for opinion makers outside the government, it is a battle for the Congress—to keep making the distinction between the immediate and the important.

The right to insult members of the government is inviolable.

Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.

Democracy divides the population into two groups: those of us who complain about government and those of us who are complained about.

As chair of the CBC, I will do all I can to be supportive of Congressman Conyers.

Listening to the people, being a minister that goes to the cities, to the squares, to the stations, to the hospitals, for me is a duty and a pleasure.

There's a lack of ambition in politics in terms of what we expect from the government, what it means to have a state.

We're promoting the concept of public engagement. It's as much about what clients do as how they say it. It's about being in people's lives, taking on relevant, of-the-moment issues.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

The stakes ... are too high for government to be a spectator sport.

But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over.