Quotes from Michael Gove

Children themselves know they are being cheated. Ultimately we owe it to our children. They are in school for 190 days a year. Every moment they spend learning is precious. If a year goes by and they are not being stretched and excited, that blights their life.

There is no prospect of any of us being able to kick out any of the presidents of Europe; they operate in a sphere and a realm well away from and out of reach of and out of touch with the people.

I wanted to put the national interest before my personal interests.

There wasn't a Scottish nationalist MP elected at any general election when we were outside the E.U.

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.

Children in dysfunctional homes at risk of abuse are kept in danger for too long because politically correct rules mean we won't challenge unfit parents.

My sister and I know our lives could have been different - radically, unthinkably, irretrievably different - if we had not been adopted. We might have found ourselves in homes without love, stability or kindness. We might have found ourselves in care for much longer, without the secure attachment that being cradled in a mother's arms brings.

I don't want to have anyone else as Prime Minister other than David Cameron, and if people spend their time thinking about some of this stuff, then they are getting in the way of two things: one, a fair, open, fact-based referendum debate; and two, the Conservative government continuing afterwards in a stable and secure fashion.

We have, in the E.U., a market rigged in favour of the rich and stacked against the poor, and I think that's wrong.

The people I admire most are those doing outstanding things for the poorest children, such as Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne academy, Dan Moynihan and all those at the Harris academies, and those at chains such as Ark and the Haberdashers, who are driving up standards in the poorest areas.

There aren't many contemporary Christian leaders who are both energetic in their condemnation of the crimes of communism and robust in their analysis of the evil of Islamism, but Justin Welby stands out.

If we, in the future, have confidence in ourselves, then there's no limit to what we can achieve, and I think the depressing litany... that we hear from the Remain side is not the type of approach we should take into the future.

Unfortunately, the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.

Don't belittle the hurt that has been caused by the job-destroying machine that is the European Union.

I think overall our national security is strengthened if we are able to make the decisions that we need and the alliances that we believe in outside the current structures of the European Union.

The next leader of this country needs to be someone who believes heart and soul that Britain should be outside the European Union.

I can't foretell the future, but I don't believe that the act of leaving the European Union would make our economic position worse; I think it would make it better.

Scottish nationalism has grown since we entered the European Union.

My view is that those challenges will be easier to meet, those risks will be less if we vote to leave because we will have control of the economic levers; we will have control over money we send to the European Union. We will have control over our own laws, and as a result, we will be able to deal with whatever the world throws at us.

Making promises and then saddling yourself with a political system and a political union that means that you cannot deliver those promises, I fear, doesn't contribute to an atmosphere of trust and confidence in politics.

What's a fact is that we give more than £350 million to the European Union and hand over control of that money to the European Union every week.

I believe that there are better opportunities to keep people safe if we are outside the European Union.

I'm one of many who have seen their parents and their friends lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their livelihood because of the European Union.

Anyone who's working in manufacturing here should know they will have increased opportunities if we leave the European Union.