- As I prepare to leave the House I wish to see it thrive, because, for all its shortcomings, it remains the best and least corrupt system of government that I have ever seen.
- People say elections are tough and gruelling and, up to a point, they are true but they are also a lot of fun.
- I have been a Member of Parliament for 18 years. I have been a member of the Government for 14 years, of the Cabinet for ten years and Prime Minister since 1990. When the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage and that is what I propose to do.
- We must go back to basics. We want our children to be taught the best; our public services to give the best; our British industry to be the best. And the Conservative Party will lead the country back to these basics right across the board: sound money; free trade; traditional teaching; respect for the family and the law.
- [on being Margaret Thatcher's final Chancellor of the Exchequer] I was forty-seven, I had the job I had wanted all my life and I had only had it for a year.
- I know the Labour Party. I grew up with it. I know the envy - and, yes, the spite - that so often motivates it.
- Labour's vision is clear. It goes as follows. If it is successful - tax it, penalize it, control it, nationalize it.
- Labour don't trust the people with their own money, with their own choices, with their own future.
- Losing power doesn't particularly worry me, it's the nature of politics, you win some you lose some.
- In economic policy, in further privatisation, in law and order, I was no counter-revolutionary. In these policies, I led the Thatcherite march onwards with conviction - for I believed in it.
- New Labour owes me a great debt. Very many of the ideas put forward against us in the 1997 general election campaign were ones I myself had advocated five years earlier: choice, ownership, responsibility and opportunity.
- The language of New Labour may have been first-rate, but it was second-hand.
- We've had over 20 British albums top the charts in countries around the world. It's not just the established stars like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. You have Adele, One Direction, Susan Boyle. Wherever you go, they're household names and they have an implication for perception and thus soft power. That is a background that few countries can match in terms of profile and that is important for our diplomacy. Because people see and think about Britain, because of these elements of soft power, and because of our history, there is a greater tendency to trust the British in diplomacy.
- In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking.
- Alright, okay, we lost.
- Leaving the European Union is the worst foreign policy decision in my lifetime. It will affect nearly every aspect of our lives for many decades to come and it will make our country poorer and weaker, and the individuals within it. It will hurt most those who have least.
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