Quotes from Michael Gove

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

Proper history teaching is being crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture.

Teachers themselves know if there's a colleague who can't keep control or keep the interest of their class, it affects the whole school.

The ability to choose who governs us, and the freedom to change laws we do not like, were secured for us in the past by radicals and liberals who took power from unaccountable elites and placed it in the hands of the people.

Whether we vote to leave or remain, there are risks to our future; there are challenges in the global economy.

It's the invincible arrogance of Europe's elites that gets me. These are people who have seen the euro collapse. These are people who are presiding over a migration crisis on their borders, and yet do they ever acknowledge that they need to change? No. They say they need more integration, more of our money, more control over this country.

The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing.

Adopting means opening your home, and heart, to a life you've never known. But there is nothing as richly rewarding as being an adoptive parent.

I don't think there will be a recession as a result of a vote to leave.

The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.

You wouldn't tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or a underperforming midwife at your child's birth. Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?

It is a belief in human potential that has guided me through my time in Government.

I was encouraged to stand for Parliament by David Cameron, and he has given me the opportunity to serve in what I believe is a great, reforming government. I think he is an outstanding Prime Minister.

I believed and hoped that we would be able to secure a deal with Europe which would enable us to amend free movement.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Conservative cabinet was called Hotel Cecil.

The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.

I think the depressing litany of projections about World War Three and global Brexit recession we hear from the Remain side is not the sort of approach we should take into the future.

There are all sorts of people who will say disobliging things about me. I don't mind that. I would rather people said, 'This is a man that sticks to his principles, not a man who's worried about popularity.'

Too many people go to university.

A coalition with Tories and Liberal Democrats together is a golden opportunity to create the sort of planning reform that means not only can we have more environmentally sensitive planning, but we can have more homes and more schools.

A lot of schools benefit from parents who are first- or second-generation immigrants, who expect the best for their children.

In my view, our immigration policy means that we have some people who can come into this country - who we might want to say no to - and others, who we might want to attract, who can't currently come in.

I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools.

I love my parents in the way most children would: for having been there at every point in my youth and childhood, ready to pick me up when I fell and support me when I stumbled.