Quotes from Charles Kennedy

My health is good and it's up to me to keep it that way.

I believe when the country feels threatened it is important that we are seen to be working together to find an appropriate structure for dealing with terrorists in our midst.

We'll need to revise the tired assumption that people automatically become more conservative as they grow older.

For any new leader of any party at any given time it takes time if you are not in government to establish yourself.

I want our party to step up its efforts to reflect and champion the concerns of everybody who has reached the second half of their lives.

I have always considered myself of the reforming centre-left.

I do think there is a great deal of caricature around the House of Commons. It is just that kind of place.

I listened to the students on campus in Plymouth, worried about their steadily deepening debts and how on earth they would ever escape them.

When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. Second was the particular hostility towards Margaret Thatcher and her local ministerial spear-carrier, energy minister and incumbent MP of 13 years' standing, Hamish Gray.

To run an effective political party you need a degree of tribalism, it's the glue that holds everyone together.

As a Scot, representing a Scottish constituency for almost the past 25 years, I do not harbour an overweening ambition to pronounce on each and every matter exclusively English.

I couldn't imagine a day without music. It relaxes and stimulates me in equal measure and I hate the sound of silence - the concept, I mean, not the track by Simon and Garfunkel.

I'm a lifelong believer in trade unionism.

No government body is more notorious for over-legislation than the Department of Trade and Industry.

You won't catch Liberal Democrats describing trade unionists as wreckers.

The most special relationships, in my experience, are based on a combination of trust and mutual respect.

We believe that government in Britain should be working to restore our reputation on the international stage after Iraq and engage better within Europe.

We actually believe in hope. But hope requires purpose. And purpose requires direction.

We Liberal Democrats believe in dialogue. We believe in cooperation with both sides of industry and between both sides of industry. And we believe in the language of cooperation. We reject the language of confrontation.

The point never to lose sight of is to be guided by the correct thing, as you see it. It's the only way to approach such profound matters and retain your integrity.

Liberal Democracy is all about extending choice. Give people the option to decide their retirement age, and you immediately extend their freedom in a very significant way.

In my view, as a country we need to rediscover some of that skepticism about government and revisit that libertarian agenda.

Soon after the 1997 election, I argued that there was no inverse law of political gravity which said that everything which went down had to come back up.

I don't want a headline saying 'Kennedy suggests this or implies that.'