“The only difference between you today and a year from now are the people you know and what you have learned.”

“If people know what you've read, they know who you are...”

“Success in any endeavor does not happen by accident. Rather, it’s the result of deliberate decisions, conscious effort, and immense persistence...all directed at specific goals.”

“You’re nothing but an aging sad cliché and I don’t want any part of it anymore. You’ll wind up right here, in a room just like this, twenty years from now paying for what I’ve been giving you for free from someone even younger than I am right now. Only you’ll be twenty years older and nothing more than a broken down image of the man you used to be. Good luck with that.”

“What Dad taught me above all else, and did so utterly unconsciously, was why people like him became Tories. He had been poor. He was working class. He aspired to be middle class. He worked hard, made it on his merits, and wanted his children to do even better than him. He thought – as did many others of his generation – that the logical outcome of this striving, born of this attitude, was to be a Tory. Indeed, it was part of the package. You made it; you were a Tory: two sides of the same coin. It became my political ambition to break that connection, and replace it with a different currency. You are compassionate; you care about those less fortunate than yourself; you believe in society as well as the individual. You can be Labour. You can be successful and care; ambitious and compassionate; a meritocrat and a progressive. These are entirely compatible ways of making sure progress happens; and they answer the realistic, not utopian, claims of human nature.”

“A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.”

“It is possible to grieve for the loss of a thing even as you are in possession of it. To crave the very thing you have been blessed with.”