Quotes by William Hague

"The war in Iraq, clearly has not turned out in the way that was hoped."

"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."

"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."

"Obviously a Conservative government will always leave taxes lower than they have been under Labour. Those things go with the territory of the Conservative Party."

"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."

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

"I think Britain would be alright, if only we had a different Government."

"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."

"As far as I'm aware, everybody in the shadow cabinet accepts that there's a compelling case on climate change and a strong scientific case."

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

"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."

"Governments that use violence to stop democratic development will not earn themselves respite forever. They will pay an increasingly high price for actions which they can no longer hide from the world with ease, and will find themselves on the wrong side of history."

"I'm not, nor is anybody I know in government part of a nasty right wing clique."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is no budget for travel for a Shadow Foreign Secretary."

"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."

"The message I take all round the world is Britain is open for business."

"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."

"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."

"There's only one growth strategy: work hard."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable, because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents."

"Syria should not belong to one family, to one coterie, or to one party. It belongs to all the people of Syria equally, in all their religious and ethnic diversity."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 trust the people."

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