Our task is a great one, not just because of how far we have fallen. Our task is a great one because of the challenges facing the people we seek to serve.

Scotland is my country, the nation that shaped me, that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me, a community whose failings drive me - drive my overwhelming desire to fight for social justice and equality.

Telling the truth, and confronting the challenge, is what politics is about.

My Scottish Labour Party is a crusade - to fight poverty, inequality and injustice.

I love hard political debate and I love beating somebody on a political point but what I'm more frustrated by is the politics where you play the man not the politics.

Schools are not exam factories for the rat race.

I got a very strong sense from my mother, in particular, that we are all equal in the sight of God.

I will not promise what I cannot deliver. And I will never hide the cost of what I propose.

I've got a very deep and abiding passion about education being far more than buildings and textbooks; it's what children bring into school with them.

I've taught fifth-year Christmas leavers last thing on a Friday afternoon. Basically, if you can face that you can face anything.

If I have learned one thing in life, it is never to take any man's own estimate of himself. He could very well be mistaken.

It's true across the U.K. that those who had least to do with causing the economic crisis are carrying the heaviest burden. That's unacceptable.

Maybe I was just born to argue with men.

My biggest ambition is to bring together what happens in the real world with what politicians talk about.

Progressive politics is not something to be bolted on to another cause.

Separation and devolution are two completely different concepts which cannot be mixed together. One is not a stop on the way to the other.

The government don't want to talk about the consequences of the choices they make. They pretend there aren't any consequences.

The Scottish Labour Party, while I have breath in my body, will listen to the views of trade unionists.

The test is can you do something, rather than have a theoretical argument - can you make a difference?

We do students a great disservice by implying that one set of students is more important than another.