Quotes from David Lammy

Music, dance, literature and the visual arts open up a rich and intensely rewarding world. It is a world that should not be the preserve of the few.

Too much of the Brexit rhetoric is based on the desire to go out and re-create Empire.

For even the most seasoned observers of American politics, Barack Obama is a phenomenon.

People 'demand' the opportunity to gamble away money they do not have, just like people 'demand' money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates. This is a warped, empty type of freedom, in which the powerful are free to exploit the vulnerable.

Supporting Spurs is a bit like being in the Labour Party. It's a labour of love, believe me.

White supremacy is not confined to strange men in the Deep South who put on white cloaks, it is not confined to strange gatherings of the English Defence League.

We cannot have different policing for different communities. It is inherently unfair.

From closing the digital divide to after-school activities and eating well, we cannot afford to ignore the link between deprivation and underachievement.

While at Harvard, I was struck by the palpable sense of noblesse oblige that surrounds their sophisticated outreach and bursary programmes. It is almost as if they view extending opportunity to disadvantaged individuals as their highest mission.

When I was a young child and before he had left us for the U.S., my father would give me Mark Twain novels. In the characters, the weather and the context, my father must have seen many parallels to his own youth in the Caribbean in the 1930s and 40s.

Parents' evenings were a big event in our social calendar and school reports were taken very seriously; 'C' was not a grade my mother recognised. Her favourite shop was WH Smith, where every week there would be a new book or pen or calculator to buy. But most importantly, she was my best friend.

Our political class obsesses over social mobility from one generation to the next - whether or not people are doing better than their parents did - but we rarely talk about those who are already in work and want to progress.

We should not let those with a political agenda use London's growing population to support their anti-immigration rhetoric, and we should challenge those who want to label London's global attraction a flaw rather than a strength.

I was obsessed with Nelson Mandela. I had big posters of him in my bedroom and he became my proxy father figure. He was in jail, so I could project all sorts of things about what he would say to me.

I'm just not convinced that the British people I know and love are interested in revolution.

Dads are not a risk to be managed, but a resource to be used for the benefit of the whole family.

Cities can be paradoxical places. In the mornings they buzz with commuters, in the evenings they come alive with diners and partygoers, at weekends the streets fill with shoppers and market traders. But amidst the hustle and bustle, even the greatest city can be a lonely place.

Prejudice is not just a personal sentiment - it can be institutional too.

We need specific work on race equality programmes and programmes targeted at helping those who are yet to fulfil their potential.

Like many black men growing up in London, I have been stopped and searched by several policemen. I was 12 years old when I was first groped and frisked by police for walking down the road. It terrified me so much I wet myself.

There were a lot of things I thought of doing as I was growing up, from becoming a singer to a priest to a pilot.

My biggest fear growing up was that I would end up in prison. That was the fate of growing numbers of my peers.

A university education is a privilege, but we should be proud that in Britain it is also a right, no matter what your income or class or ethnic background.

You can't be in business with international development and not understand basic issues of colonialism, postcolonialism and white privilege.