William Hague Quotes

We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today.

Spending only what the country can afford, rewarding savings, encouraging independence, supporting marriage: people know that these things are common sense.

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.

Iran's continued, widespread persecution of ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and political prisoners is a disgrace and stands as a shameful indictment of Iran's leaders.

I have found that I get a better reaction from people once I am less bothered about their reaction.

I feel fortunate that, by the age of 40, I had crammed in an entire political career.I had been in the Cabinet and been leader of the party, so now I can branch out into other things ... it is a very liberating feeling.

Remember the No campaign is Conservative people, Labour people, people of no party.

Time is not on Gaddafi's side. People ask about the exit strategy. It's Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy because this pressure will only mount and it will be intensified over the coming days and weeks.

Turning away Turkey from the EU would be a great, long-term - a century-long - error by Europe.

You can gain in your effectiveness as a politician from a wide acquaintance with the world and from a degree of independence that having some outside interests gives.

When you reduce taxes on higher earners it's vital to be reducing them on lower earning people as well so the nation shares in the approach.

Well, if you're looking for me to lead a normal representative life, well good luck finding a foreign secretary who'd be like that - totally dependant on the political system and has never earned any money. Then you'll get the politicians you deserve.

Whatever happens in Mogadishu, in Somalia, will happen in Great Britain. We have interlocking interests.

I don't deny that there are problems in the intelligence world, but I would argue that in the UK we try to uphold the highest standards in the world.

We are making progress militarily, there is no doubt about that. You've seen the reports from Misrata, although reports of the Gaddafi forces completely pulling out of Misrata seem to be exaggerated.

How long do Syrian families have to live in fear that their children will be killed or tortured, before the Security Council will act? How many people need to die before the consciences of world capitals are stirred?

If some of the people who write about mojo came with me for a week, they would drop dead on their feet.

Governments that block the aspirations of their people, that steal or are corrupt, that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people, or where warranted, the reach of international law.

I thank the Prime Minister for his remarks about me. Debating with him at the Dispatch Box has been exciting, fascinating, fun, an enormous challenge and, from my point of view, wholly unproductive in every sense. I am told that in my time at the Dispatch Box I have asked the Prime Minister 1,118 direct questions, but no one has counted the direct answers-it may not take long.

Not all politicians are bonkers, but most of them are.

You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don't agree with, or find disagreeable, so it's important to stress that balance.

Let's not be afraid to speak the common sense truth: you can't have high standards without good discipline.

People know that you can't spend more than you have.

It is the mission of the next Conservative Government to build the Responsible Society.

To the hard-working people who set a little bit aside each month, to provide for their children, or to fund their own retirement, I say: you should be rewarded not punished.

Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.

Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

Egypt is a sovereign nation.

Ambition is best tempered with self-knowledge!

Britain does not normally these days play a huge part in peacekeeping.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

We're not getting involved in terms of sending ground forces into Libya. Let's be clear about that. And indeed the UN Resolution forbids that. It says no foreign occupation of any part of Libya.

I still agree with the invasion of Iraq. I don't agree with most of the decisions that accompanied it.

On the question of taking credit for what goes right and blame for what goes wrong - having led the Conservative party for four years, I have never heard of this notion before.

Yes, I've never inherited a penny!

I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.

I think the way things have been left after Iraq is that people won't believe the Government of the day, so they have to know that lessons have been learnt and that all political parties and people, whether they were for or against the invasion of Iraq, have learnt lessons.

Today further EU targeted sanctions on Syria come into force. The message is clear and unambiguous: those responsible for the repression will be singled out and held accountable.

At a time of such hope and optimism in the Middle East, we cannot let the Libyan government violate every principle of international law and human rights with impunity.

Inspiring scenes of people taking the future of their countries into their own hands will ignite greater demands for good governance and political reform elsewhere in the world, including in Asia and in Africa.

We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.

It's really necessary for the United States to continue to give strong leadership to the Middle East peace process, supported by European countries at the same time.

The Bill of Rights was intended to secure freedom of speech - the freedom of speech of members of parliament to speak freely rather than be at threat of ... the threat of an over powerful monarch at the time.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

One day I will go back to my books and piano, but not yet.

In my view what you can't argue for is a system that is neither decisive nor proportional and can be indecisive and disproportionate at the same time.

People work hard and save hard to own a car. They do not want to be told that they cannot drive it by a Deputy Prime Minister whose idea of a park and ride scheme is to park one Jaguar and drive away in another.

The total economy of Latin America is bigger than China.

It was inevitable the Titanic was going to set sail, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea to be on it.

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.

The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions.

You have to have as many defences in place as you possibly can. But even then of course - and it's important to stress this - you cannot guarantee being able to prevent every attack or every kind of attack.

People feel that the EU is a one-way process, a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change.

I've always been opposed myself to prisoners having the vote.

You can see over time whether people are prepared to differ or not.

Labour have been listening for too long to the so-called experts who think that competition is a dirty word and that communicating facts to our children is elitist.

Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.

I don't think my principles change. I think the way in which you apply those principles to modern society changes.

The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before.

It must be quite rare for an interviewer to be interviewed.

There's only one growth strategy: work hard.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Someone once claimed I was not really a Yorkshireman!

When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.

The people of Britain want a Home Secretary who will give them back their streets. They want a Home Secretary who will speak up for the victim, not the criminal.

People feel that in too many ways the EU is something that is done to them, not something over which they have a say.

The EU is not a country and it's not going to become a country, in my view, now or ever in the future. It is a group of countries working together.

To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you've been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.

A generation of children has been betrayed.