Hope springs eternal even in politics.

What I hope is in five years' time I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked but it has worked.

Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do politics is what we create by what we work for by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.

There is no hope even that woman with her right to vote will ever purify politics.

For a person who promised hope and civility in politics Mr. Obama has shown a borderline obsessiveness in blaming Mr. Bush.

Well Judy I would hope in the new year we could start thinking about politics not like it was the Super Bowl where you always have to have one team that wins and the other team has to be a loser.

The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

To my great disappointment it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield Illinois.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

In the end that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

In my early 20s I studied history and politics and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that.

A year is an eternity in politics - though less than a moment in history.

Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics?

We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future the health the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise.

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios and the long legislative battles over health care reform financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.

I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.

By asking the question 'Am I happy? ' and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness there is a political route that can be taken by asking another question - 'Can politics deliver happiness and should it try?'

Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water using the word lightly but denying the hard policies it implies. Labour shies away from it but should take up the challenge.

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat obedient loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.

King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Let's just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politics and government know that our responsibility is to the American people that we have a responsibility to find our common ground to seek it and to find it.

I'm in politics. I'm in government so nothing surprises me.