"I would like you to go to the farmhouse in Marlborough Downs where I was brought up. My father was a tenant farmer farming 500 acres. ... I was not uncomfortably off. I am not saying that. But there was no question of him sending me to Eton if I had not won a scholarship. That is what social mobility is all about."

“We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.”

“Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.”

“I am slightly tired of the approach that it is all because of racism on the part of the police, just as I get slightly weary of police officers saying they are asked to police black communities more lightly.”

“There is no dread conspiracy against us. There is simply an argument, and no reason why we should be scared or defeatist in that argument. We must continue to fight our corner for British interests. But we can do that without frightening ourselves with ogres.”

“There will be shifts of sovereignty but only in specific areas which I consider debatable. The Community should lead as external trade negotiator. ... But there must be basic areas of national sovereignty. Peace and war; law and order; foreign policy; fiscal policy. You can cooperate, but these are not matters for Community competence. Our resistance was entirely justified in the case of the Social Charter. ... I do not believe in the European glacier, that there is something irresistible about European integration.”

“After fierce political discussion over more than twenty years, the British commitment to Europe is now firmly established. As I have said we ask for no exemptions or privileges. We recognise the concepts which inspired the original founders, and salute their wisdom in setting up the Community institutions. We believe that as a member of the class of 1973 we have an equal right, and perhaps an equal wisdom, to discuss the future of the Community as members of the class of 1958. We intend to exercise that right as Europeans, convinced of the essential validity of the case for Europe put forward by the Founding Fathers of the Community, anxious that we should find together the right ways of applying those principles to the new circumstances of 1982. I do not pretend that we face an easy task. But we shall apply ourselves to it with a commitment which no-one should doubt.”