British Quotes

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

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

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 can hardly think of an occasion when I've got into a stand-up fight with any political opponent. I've got my views, people know what they are, they can agree or they can choose to disagree. I'm not going to waste time just rubbishing everybody else.

I believe that access to a university education should be based on the ability to learn, not what people can afford. I think there is no more nauseating a sight than politicians pulling up the ladder of opportunity behind them.

I am genuinely not an over-the-top kind of person about politics or anything else.

Further Education should be about the ability to learn, not the ability to pay - everyone who is able should have the opportunity, regardless of their family background. I don't want to see students struggling with huge debts or frightened off even going to university in the first place.

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

Courage is a peculiar kind of fear.

Actually, I think it's quite sensible not to take yourself too seriously.

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.

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously; equally, there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable.

I'm not someone who dwells upon past events, taking the view that life is too short.

We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them.

Your life is the same wherever you go.

We were on the cover of Women's Wear Daily, which was hardly rock 'n' roll, but it pleased me.

Pop music should be about young people.

Maybe I've got to admit that what I did here was enough. I can make some more films. Maybe I'll direct a film. Maybe I'll have my musical put on stage. But nothing, really, to be absolutely honest, competes with making a very successful pop band for 10 years of my life.

It's a shame because we experienced probably the greatest thing - in art, in pop - we'll ever do. And it would be good to sit around and talk about it.

I've been through Hell with some of the members of my old band, and Hell is highly stressful.

I've always thought that actors wanted to be pop musicians and pop musicians wanted to be actors.

For 24 hours a day, for 10 years, all I thought about was being in a band. That's all I did. I had no other social life. I don't want my life to be like that now. I've spent the past 10 years having a real life as well. But Spandau Ballet is such a difficult shadow to outrun.

Young people don't want to sit at home and watch television; they'd sooner be out doing their own thing.

With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.

We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood.

We always had chocolates and my mother was careful to make sure they were unwrapped in advance so the paper wouldn't rustle in the middle of a performance.

The character I play in Star Quality says acting is the be-all and end-all of her life. I'm not like that. I do enjoy working and I give every job my best shot but I never feel, What on Earth am I going to do now?

So often actors only mix with actors, which is quite incestuous, and doesn't give them the insight into how other people work.

Older people, who just happen to have been around longer, may not be cleverer than the young, but they have seen more.

Language is my bugbear. Everyone says things now like 'I was sat' instead of 'I was sitting', which just sounds so ugly.