As Liberal Democrats and proponents of federalism, we must put our heads above the parapet and recapture and disseminate the true meaning of federalism. We have to win the vocabulary before we succeed in the vision.
I am genuinely not an over-the-top kind of person about politics or anything else.
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 not someone who dwells upon past events, taking the view that life is too short.
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.
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.
We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them.
As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. They were puzzled by the Scots' antipathy, given the Falklands war and the strong militaristic history of the Highlands and elsewhere.
By common consent, most European countries support the maintenance of robust welfare states and are comfortable with taxation systems that support them.
I don't want a headline saying 'Kennedy suggests this or implies that.'
I think that former leaders are best seen occasionally and not too often heard - particularly on the subject of their successors!
We'll need to revise the tired assumption that people automatically become more conservative as they grow older.
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.
I do think there is a great deal of caricature around the House of Commons. It is just that kind of place.
I did not dwell on the issue of Europe during either the 2001 or the 2005 campaigns - despite it being a pivotal personal concern and despite seeing it as something of a litmus test for liberal democracy.
My approach is always to try to be straight with people, especially about what my party can achieve.
Three simple words - freedom, justice and honesty. These sum up what the Liberal Democrats stand for.
I'm a fully paid-up member of the human race.
There is no satisfaction to be derived from having had many of our arguments borne out by events.
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 power is exercised exclusively at the centre, the result is rigidity of rules and alienation of the people subject to those rules.
Like John Major in her wake, Thatcher was convinced that she understood the Scots - yet couldn't understand why we remained so stubbornly resistant towards the notion of understanding her.
A perennial problem that has faced the Scottish Highlands is that, time and again, too many of the more talented young people have had to move elsewhere - even abroad - through a lack of opportunities that should have been available.
During my campaign, people of my age and younger said consistently that they would not vote because their votes simply no longer matter and because no government or member of Parliament cared a whit about their problems and their striving for employment.
Politics means facing up to hard choices and facing down prejudice, short-termism, the easy, tempting court of knee-jerk public reaction.
We need a liberal agenda in which government resists the temptation to interfere in the lives of individuals but is equally determined to play an active role where creative action can advance the liberties of all.
I think you've got to like people. There are MPs who are either painfully shy or who don't like public speaking or don't socialise very well, and you just think this must be the worst job in the world for them.
Terror can never be defeated by force alone.
'Federalism', in the context of political and media usage in Britain, has come to mean the creation and imposition of a European superstate, one centralised in Brussels.
Of all the principles which constitute Liberal Democracy, internationalism is the clearest, the most distinctive, and the one with the longest history.
We need less theoretical debate and more practical application and acknowledgment of what Europe can and does do so that it is brought home to people in a relevant way.
No government body is more notorious for over-legislation than the Department of Trade and Industry.
Fair votes - fundamentally - are about the rights and the interests of the people.
Valuing public servants would boost morale among those on the front line of implementing government policy.
It must be a judge - never a politician - who decides whether someone is to be locked up.
The most special relationships, in my experience, are based on a combination of trust and mutual respect.