A challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence... There is no doubt that the time to act is now.

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

People should go about their daily lives, to work, to live, to travel, to shop, to do the things people did in the same way as they did them before 11 September.

The moment you stigmatize a whole group of people - for example, Muslims - then, obviously, you make the decent, law-abiding Muslims feel as if they're under threat in some way or that their legitimacy, as members or citizens of society, is brought into question.

Politics is about listening and it's about leading.

All the way through, we have been willing to take risks, provided at the end of it we can get a decent lasting settlement in Northern Ireland

I see the Koran very much as an outsider. It stands in the great prophetic tradition of trying to return people to the basic principles of spirituality. Taken for its time, it was an extraordinarily progressive declaration of principle. It is also extraordinary for a Christian to read: for example, there are more references to Mary than in the Gospels. The tragedy is that it has been so warped and misapplied.