Libertarian Conservatives

"We wouldn't want to be like the Swiss, would we? That would be awful! We'd be rich!"

"If this is the face of Scottish nationalism, it's a pretty ugly nation."

"The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically. How many journalists in jail now?"

"I have to say that everybody from David Cameron to half this panel say, "Wouldn't it be terrible if we were like Norway and Switzerland?" Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self governing."

"The opening of the doors on January 1, 2014, to 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians is going to become a huge issue next year."

"[Any changes Mr Cameron could obtain from Brussels would be cosmetic and the UK risks becoming] a province of a United States of Europe"

"Rather than bring peace and harmony, the EU will cause insurgency and violence."

"I'm not really a politician [..] I’m actually a businessman. I supported Margaret Thatcher, I believed in Ronald Reagan, I believe in free markets, I believe in small government, enterprise, hard work, and I believe in a taxation system that doesn’t punish those who do well in life."

"I'm not for sale, neither is UKIP."

"Winning this referendum, if and when it comes, is not going to be an easy thing but I feel that UKIP's real job starts today,"

"[Responding to criticism of his comments in the GQ interview] I said it just after parliament had voted not to go to war in Syria, thank God. One of the things Putin said did actually change the debate in this country … I did make it perfectly clear. It depends what it means by the word … I said I don't like him, I wouldn't trust him and I wouldn't want to live in his country, but compared with the kids who run foreign policy in this country, I've more respect for him than our lot."

"Once again, I challenge the Prime Minister to have an open debate with me on why he believes we must stay part of this failing, corrupt EU. The future of our nation is at stake. Mr Cameron, you have my phone number."

"If we are just going to have a fudged referendum on 'do we stay in or go further?' then that's not good enough."

"As you are well aware, the last time the people of this country were given a say on membership of the European Union was back in 1975. This must have been a factor in your thinking when, in 2007, you gave a “cast-iron guarantee” to hold a referendum if you became Prime Minister. Since that promise, however, your message on the issue has been confusing and misleading. You say the time is not right but refuse to clarify when the time will be right. You believe that leaving would not be in our best interests and an in/out referendum is flawed because it offers a “single choice”. In last week’s Sun poll, almost 70 per cent of voters said they would like a referendum. In the same poll, a clear majority said they would like to leave the EU and yet your plans would deny them that opportunity. I believe the British people, along with many of your own backbench MPs, want and deserve a straight in/out choice in a referendum. I propose a public debate between us where we can put our respective cases forward. My challenge to you is an open and honest one and I hope you will afford me, and the people of this country, a proper say on the matter."

"The euro Titanic has now hit the iceberg - and there simply aren't enough lifeboats to go round."

"[EU leaders] are not undemocratic. They are anti-democratic. These are very bad and dangerous people. They are the worst people we have seen in Europe since 1945."

"I do think that the banking system is now in the most perilous state we’ve seen in over 70 years."

"We know the costs of Europe. What are the benefits?"

"The situation in Greece just goes from bad to worse. We’ve now got a situation where there was the big suicide a few weeks ago, where a 77-year-old man shot himself in the head outside the Greek Parliament. That was the public face of what’s gone wrong."

"But do you know that every day there are people that are literally leaving their children at the doors of the Greek Orthodox Church, with notes around their necks saying, ‘We cannot afford to feed or look after these children, please take them from us.’ Can you imagine that?"

"If Spain goes, Europe on its own will not be big enough to save the banks."

"It is virtually impossible for what you are voting on to remain as it is currently. There could be huge changes to the [EU fiscal] treaty and there could be huge changes to the euro zone itself."

"When I said yes to these debates I thought you would honestly make the pro-EU case. By saying 7% of our laws are made in Brussels, you are wilfully lying to the British people about the extent to which we have given control of our country and our democracy and I am really shocked and surprised you would do that."

"The EU is mired in deep structural crisis. Greece, Portugal and Ireland cannot survive inside the Euro."

"When people stand up and talk about the great success that the EU has been, I'm not sure anybody saying it really believes it themselves anymore."

"This is taking place inside Europe. This is taking place inside a once great nation. The nation that invented democracy. We are on the edge of total social breakdown. And frankly, as far as the euro is concerned and the austerity measures are concerned, the medicine is killing the patient."

"We seek an amicable divorce from the European Union and its replacement with a genuine free-trade agreement, which is what my parents' generation thought we’d signed up for in the first place."

"You have the charisma of a damp rag, and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question that I want to ask, […] that we're all going to ask, is "Who are you?" I'd never heard of you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, President, who voted for you, and what mechanism … oh, I know democracy's not popular with you lot, and what mechanism do the people of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy? Well, I sense, I sense though that you are competent and capable and dangerous, and I have no doubt in your intention, to be the quiet assassin of European democracy, and of the European nation states. You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states - perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which of course is pretty much a non-country. But since you took over, we've seen Greece reduced to nothing more than a protectorate. Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I speak on behalf of the majority of British people in saying: We don't know you, we don't want you, and the sooner you're put out to grass, the better."

"I think that politics needs a bit of spicing up."

"I have been called a great many things in my time – that's politics."

"And I honestly predict that I mean this. That if we go on doing this to Greece. We will drive that country into a violent revolution."

"[immigration is] good for the rich because it's cheaper nannies and cheaper chauffeurs and cheaper gardeners but it's bad news for ordinary Britons... it has left the white working class effectively as an underclass, and I think that is a disaster for our society"

"And what is the reaction of the British political class? Well the Lib Dems, still think that the Euro is a success! I don't quite think where Cleggy gets this from, I don't know. Perhaps he is considering an alternative career as a stand up comedian, once he's out of politics."

"At the time I was alleged to have made these remarks, one of your most popular weekly shows was the Black and White Minstrel Show. The BBC was very happy to use blackface - not just in the Black and White Minstrels, they did it in It Ain't Half Hot Mum."

"You're out of touch with reality in that regard."

"People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned -- it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned -- and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing."

"The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average."

"Educational romanticism asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top."

"Two deep human desires were at war … the longing for stability, for form, for permanence, which in its essence is the desire for death, and the opposing hunger for movement, change, instability and risk, which are life. Men came from the east and built these American towns because they wished to go no farther, and the towns they built were shaped by the urge to go onward."

"Writing fiction is … an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it."

"The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year’s seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed."

"Since 1914...I wait for the natural to return; for newspapers to report news with care for accuracy and grammar; for schools to teach and for pupils to study; for faces to be sane and intelligent, and even humorous; for American artists and poets and writers to be exuberant and optimistic...it is all gone with the music of Vienna and the gaiety of San Francisco. But I still see everything against that background, and really I see nothing funny anywhere. The Beatnik beard and the mini skirt and the topless waitress, they ARE funny, I know they are funny but they only make me tired, I don't laugh."

"One thing I hate about the New Deal is that it is killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit. I simply do not know what to tell my own boys, leaving school and confronting this new world whose ideal is Security and whose practice is dependence upon government instead of upon one’s self.... All the old character-values seem simply insane from a practical point of view; the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man is penalized from every direction."

"The question is whether personal freedom is worth the terrible effort, the never-lifted burden and risks of self-reliance."

"That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work."

"We joined long wagon trains moving south; we met hundreds of wagons going north; the roads east and west were crawling lines of families traveling under canvas, looking for work, for another foothold somewhere on the land.... The country was ruined, the whole world was ruined; nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair."

"It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over … I would see below all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there—over the edge, and below—but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself."

"And I say again, you need not worry any more about money. If I were to drop dead this instant, I have enough to double your present income if you never touched a cent of the principle. If you take a notion to do something that costs more than your income warrants, you need only let me know. You can have it."

"My mother cannot learn to have any reliance upon my financial judgment or promises. It's partly, I suppose, because she still thinks of me as a child...She even hesitates to let me have the responsibility of bringing up butter from the spring(house), for fear I won't do it quite right!...This unaccountable daughter who roams the world, borrowing money here and getting shot at there...is a pride, in a way, but a ceaseless apprehension, too."

"The first twenty years of my life were wasted...I didn't fit my environment, and I didn't know any other."