"I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting, then I realised it was me."
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards."
Soren Kierkegaard on Experience"The only source of knowledge is experience."
Albert Einstein on Experience"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."
C. S. Lewis on Experience"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."
Oscar Wilde on Experience"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
Mark Twain on Experience"The foundations of a strong economy don't rest alone on the decisions of Chancellors or the spending programmes of government."
"If you want to change the way your banking system is regulated, if you want to learn the mistakes of what's gone wrong, then you have to change your government."
"It's normally the kiss of death to be identified as a rising star, or someone to watch."
"Of all the public services, education is the one I'm most interested in. You get a more dynamic economy, you deal with most social problems, and it's morally right."
"There was a real fear that a euro-zone bank might fail, that we'd have a sovereign debt problem in one of the larger European economies. That's dissipated, thanks largely to the action of the European Central Bank."