You can't defend the indefensible - anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical.

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

My mother liked Jim Reeves. I hated his records. He was unbearable.

You can't defend the indefensible - anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical.

My London constituency in Hackney has one of the highest levels of gun crime in the country. But the problem is no longer confined to inner city areas. Gun crime has spread to communities all over Britain.

Gun crime is a major cause of fear and distress throughout the UK. The problem is deeply entrenched in a wide range of social and cultural factors and therefore not an isolated issue.

Abortion is an issue of conscience for the Labour party.

Because when you watch U.S. television, all the presenters and reporters, they're all out of central casting.

Families are struggling against a tide of junk information on junk food.

Finally, there's a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.

I believe every abortion is a tragedy.

I don't think you can have pain and soul-searching doing the right thing for your child.

I knew what could happen to my son if he was sent to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd.

I want to write a best-selling book.

I wanted my marriage to work, but it didn't.

I was a postman one Christmas and I developed a morbid fear of dogs.

I'm a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.

In Parliament we debate on and we decide the laws that are going to govern the country.

In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.

It's very lonely bringing up a child on your own.

Mental health is often missing from public health debates even though it's critical to wellbeing.

My family were from Jamaica.

My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.

Outsiders often have an insight that an insider doesn't quite have.

Tackling childhood obesity is key.

When fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple, the children surf the internet all day in dark corners of the room and are bombarded with latest gadgets. Things replace parental standards.

You learn from mistakes.

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

I would rather take the role and work and make my own money and self respect than to have sex with someone who has a lot of money.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

If you improve a teacher's self-esteem, confidence, communication skills or stress levels, you improve that teacher's overall effectiveness across the curriculum.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Self-justification is a treacherous servant.

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it's unbelievable!

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

I think it is important to maintain a sense of self and confidence, not letting either falter for the sake of a particular part or project, no matter how great it might be.