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

When I started out as Prime Minister I wanted to please all the people all the time. By the end I was wondering if I pleased any of the people any of the time.

When my parents were growing up the world's population was under three billion. During my children's lifetime, it is likely to exceed nine billion. You don't need to be an expert to realise that sustainable development is going to become the greatest challenge we face this century

I think most people who have dealt with me think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.

There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

One of the paradoxes of globalization is that, in the developing world, we've seen massive reductions in property.