Top 196 Quotes & Sayings by Nicola Sturgeon - Page 3

Scotland never voted for Margaret Thatcher.

Would I love to think that one day I would be First Minister of an independent Scotland? Of course.

I am quite driven. I know what I think, and I know what I want to achieve, but I also hope that people who are asked to describe me would describe me as pretty down-to-earth, loyal, friendly. The more experience I have got in politics, I think the more I have allowed me to shine through.

I'm quite hypercritical of myself. It's a very Scottish thing, always thinking that you've got to be that bit better than everyone else to be good enough.

This government and the party that I lead will continue to argue an alternative to the Tory-Labour austerity.

The assumption that people sometimes make is that I have made a cold, calculated decision to put my career ahead of having family, and that's not true.

We've chosen to stay part of the Westminster system, but we don't want to be a forgotten, sidelined part of it.

Politics is a very male-dominated, male-driven profession. I was not just a woman but a young woman, and I suppose you end up trying to behave in a way that you think is expected of you.

Clearly, any issues about breaching of expenses rules should be properly investigated.

Many people from many different walks of life have marriages that break up, and those are deeply personal, deeply painful but ultimately private matters.

I am quite hot-headed; I am quite impulsive. Fortunately, it doesn't last very long.

I like Indian takeaway.

If your pal or neighbour is in the SNP, you're more likely to listen to them than if you just turn on the telly and see me or Alex. The growth of membership is building a politically engaged community base that hasn't been there in my lifetime.

I admire Obama.

Labour's support in Scotland depends on their ability to be electable. If they are divided and unelectable, what's the point?

The truth of the matter is that countries the world over have deficits. Let us remember this about Scotland's deficit: it was not created in an independent Scotland; it was created on Westminster's watch.

Social media is natural to me, and it's a very immediate way of saying something. It's the way politics are done these days. In modern politics, you can't ignore that even if you wanted to. I can't imagine doing politics without it.

I'm the leader of the SNP. I think you would expect me to say I would vote SNP in whatever constituency I lived in.

Maybe its time for politicians to fight back a little bit in terms of this notion that politicians are all in it for themselves, we're all the same, we're not driven by sincere motives. Because the fact of the matter is the vast majority are.

If there is a 'Leave' vote in England and across the U.K. as a whole, then we see the reins of power being seized by politicians who are on the right of the Conservative party.

The SNP became a minority government in 2007, then a majority one in 2011. But Labour viewed what was happening as some kind of aberration. They felt the problem wasn't theirs: they didn't have to change; the Scottish people had just gone down this wrong road, and if they waited long enough, they would find their way back.

We will never vote for the renewal of Trident; that's a decision which will fall to be made in the next Westminster parliament. We will never vote for that.

If something can be proven to work, we should try it... Making sure that our young folk get the best education is the only thing that matters to me, and if something can be shown to work in doing that or if something's worth trying to do that, then I'll certainly be in the market for it.

I've got absolutely no desire or intention of damaging England.

I hope nobody in England is afraid of the SNP - there is absolutely no need to be.

Talent is really important in politics, but experience is also really important.

I take responsibility for everything that happens in the SNP as leader.

I think Scotland will become an independent country. I've always believed that. It means that if I'm right on that, there has to be another referendum at some stage. But the timing and circumstances of that will require careful judgment.

A whole range of things are done to ensure services remain safe and sustainable because that is the absolute paramount duty of the health board.

Most politicians come into politics because they want to make a difference; we just have different ideas how to do it.

Is it not typical that we have a Tory Government that wants, just like its pals in the Labour Party, constantly to talk down Scotland's prospects?

I have said repeatedly I do want to take longer to eliminate the deficit than the other parties. Because I want to see us have the ability to invest more in our economy, in our public services, and in lifting people out of poverty.

I've had particularly unpleasant stuff, and it has been reported that I've had death threats. Twitter and Facebook give people who have always been out there a platform from which to hurl abuse, and all I can do is try to block it out and remind myself that tweets are transient and get lost in the ether after a few moments.

Scotland almost invented the modern world. I mean, all of these televisions, telephones, penicillin, we all - all of these things were invented in Scotland.

Scottish politics, U.K. politics, is not really like American politics in this respect. Not everybody is absolutely obsessed with image. I'm not saying the United States is obsessed with image.

I want there to be another independence referendum at some stage. I want Scotland to be independent, but I wouldn't choose to have it happen because England votes to come out of the E.U.

I know you've got to earn people's trust, and you've got to earn it day after day after day.

I feel comfortable in a position of leadership, but that's not to say I feel complacent about it. I take it incredibly seriously.

I'm manifestly not the same as Alex Salmond. I'm a different gender, for example... I'm being flippant, but maybe this is a partly gender-driven difference: I'm very keen that we find a way of reaching out across party divides to find things we agree on, as well as the things we disagree on.

At these big set-piece events like the leaders' debates, that exterior of calm and serenity is nothing compared to what's going on inside most of the time.

My politics are wildly different from hers, but someone who has been good for women in politics, stamped her authority on European and world affairs, is Angela Merkel.

It's very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised.

I think the Tories are doing - and are intent on doing - damage to things I hold dear.

My political awakening, if I can be as grand as to call it that, was all about what was happening around me. It wasn't some romantic, patriotic vision of Scotland going back to what it had been 300 years previously.

I was fascinated, long before I joined the SNP, in the world around me; current affairs really interested me.

I am the granddaughter of an English woman. I love England and her people and, regardless of politics, consider you to be family... and always will.

Literally every time I'm on camera, as well as there being commentary on what I've said, there'll be commentary on what my hair looked like, what I wear. Often it's written in the most hideous and quite cruel way.

Being a housewife is not important to me, but I'm never happier than when I come home and shut the door.

I'm not making any secret of the fact I still believe in independence. We'll continue to argue the case.

I desperately want Scotland to be an independent country. I cannot, though, sit here and tell you definitively that it will happen, and that it will happen on this timescale, because I have to respect the opinion of the people of Scotland.

Our MPs will take decisions on how they're voting on a day-to-day basis. But I'm the leader of the party, and in terms of our overall strategy and how we vote on key issues, then ultimately, those decisions will be mine.

I love talking to the public, I love hearing what people have got to say.

I'm not going to do anything that sees a Tory government be likely.

I wish we lived in a world where how you looked or what you wore wasn't an issue for men or women, and it's by and large not an issue for men, so I wish it wasn't an issue for women, but it is.

I've not hidden and I'll never hide the fact that I want Scotland to be an independent country. But as long as we're part of the Westminster system, it's really important to people in Scotland that we get good decisions coming out of Westminster. So we've got a vested interest in being a constructive participant.

I was studious and bookish. Not just as a child but also as a teenager. I took myself too seriously.

It would be a very serious mistake for the U.K. to vote to leave the European Union, and I think it would be democratically indefensible for Scotland, if we had voted to stay in, to face the prospect of being taken out.

Our opposition to Trident is very clear, very firm, very long-standing, very principled, and we would seek to build an alliance to prevent the renewal of Trident.

It is clear that my predecessor as First Minister is frightening the life out of the Tories and the Labour Party. Long may it continue.

I feel sorry for generations of Labour voters and supporters who must look and wonder what on earth has gone wrong and what Labour is for.