William Hague

“One day I will go back to my books and piano, but not yet.”

“It is the mission of the next Conservative Government to build the Responsible Society.”

“You can gain in your effectiveness as a politician from a wide acquaintance with the world and from a degree of independence that having some outside interests gives.”

“We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.”

“Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.”

“The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions.”

“People know that you can't spend more than you have.”

“There's only one growth strategy: work hard.”

“When you reduce taxes on higher earners it's vital to be reducing them on lower earning people as well so the nation shares in the approach.”

“When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.”

“It must be quite rare for an interviewer to be interviewed.”

“The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before.”

“The EU should be concentrated on adapting to globalisation and global competitiveness, not building more powerful centralised institutions in Brussels.”

“If some of the people who write about mojo came with me for a week, they would drop dead on their feet.”

“The people of Britain want a Home Secretary who will give them back their streets. They want a Home Secretary who will speak up for the victim, not the criminal.”

“I trust the people.”

“We are making progress militarily, there is no doubt about that. You've seen the reports from Misrata, although reports of the Gaddafi forces completely pulling out of Misrata seem to be exaggerated.”

“People feel that the EU is a one-way process, a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change.”

“You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don't agree with, or find disagreeable, so it's important to stress that balance.”

“Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?”