I think that if politics is just about getting your backside on important seats, then it's a pretty worthless endeavor.

Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off.

I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.

Hong Kong's people will get what they want, despite China's objections. Freedom invariably wins in the end.

I suppose I've always carried what is regarded as a bit of unnecessary baggage in Britain. I've always carried the charge that I am an intellectual in politics.

It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large.

It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.