Quotes from Johann Lamont

While I'm leader, nothing will be off limits - there will not be one policy, one rule, one way of working which cannot be changed.

We need to find a way of having a conversation across the parties on how you fund local government.

I made a different decision to send my children to the local state school.

The idea that an independent Scotland - having separated assets and liabilities from the rest of the U.K. - would expect the rest of the U.K. to be a lender of last resort, and of course be kind to them, doesn't make any sense.

I remember going to see Billy Graham in a cinema in Glasgow, and he was down in London. I used to go and hear preachers, and then we always went to church and Sunday school. That mattered a lot to me.

There is a circus around politics. But if you think it is a game, then you forget what the purpose of politics actually is.

We have a government that boasts about free education. Those of us who have scratched below the surface know it is costing us by denying opportunities for others to attend college or university.

If I have learned one thing in life, it is never to take any man's own estimate of himself. He could very well be mistaken.

Maybe I was just born to argue with men.

I got a very strong sense from my mother, in particular, that we are all equal in the sight of God.

I love hard political debate and I love beating somebody on a political point but what I'm more frustrated by is the politics where you play the man not the politics.

Progressive politics is not something to be bolted on to another cause.

What I will say will not always please you, but what I say will always be honest and true and how I genuinely see it.

Fair tax does not mean we don't want to encourage wealth creation. Wealth creation is how we raise the money to pay for world class schools and hospitals, for proper care of the weak, and dignity for the elderly.

My Scottish Labour Party is a crusade - to fight poverty, inequality and injustice.

I firmly believe that Scotland's place is in the U.K., and I do not believe in powers for power's sake.

We shall seek debate without division or rancour.

If you don't accept there is a problem, then it is hard to debate things.

Our task is a great one, not just because of how far we have fallen. Our task is a great one because of the challenges facing the people we seek to serve.

Social injustice is what puts Scotland at its greatest disadvantage, and restoring the 50p tax rate will start to fight that.

There is a danger of Scottish politics being between two sets of dinosaurs... the Nationalists who can't accept they were rejected by the people, and some colleagues at Westminster who think nothing has changed.

I didn't particularly want to go to Westminster - not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.

I'm pretty proud of having completed a marathon myself, so I can only imagine the pride that real athletes feel when they are picked for the Olympic or the Paralympic Games.

I used to go to a Gaelic class on a Saturday morning, but I never felt myself that I could speak it properly.