My view is, the most important thing as prime minister is trying to make the right judgments. In order to make good judgments, you need good advice; you need good principles, and you need a clear head, and you need to have a sense of equilibrium.

One of the things I most admire about America is they have created a genuine melting pot society, a country of opportunity; you can be of any religion, colour, ethnicity, persuasion and make it to the top of your chosen field. And that's something I admire about America and hope they continue with.

Whether you either passionately think we should stay in, or on balance think we should stay in, or on a balance of risks think we should stay in - for heaven's sake get out and vote in, because you might wake up and find out you're out.

There is a growing frustration that the EU is seen as something that is done to people rather than acting on their behalf. And this is being intensified by the very solutions required to resolve the economic problems.

It is vital that we get these policies right as we take forward our plans to drive down the deficit and transform our economy.

I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too. So I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

The best route out of poverty, to avoid food bank usage, is to make sure more people get a job.

As far as I am concerned this referendum should settle the matter. I believe it will one way or another be decisive. Britain will not want to go through this again. On the other hand if we vote to leave, this really is irreversible.

Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return. So we will have time for a proper, reasoned debate. At the end of that debate you, the British people, will decide.

Edward Heath and Richard Nixon took personal awkwardness with each other to new and excruciating levels.

I've said I'll stand for a full second term, but I think after that it will be time for new leadership. Terms are like Shredded Wheat - two are wonderful but three might just be too many.

There's another way we are getting behind business - by sorting out the banks. Taxpayers bailed you out. Now it's time for you to repay the favour and start lending to Britain's small businesses.

What we have seen with Islamist extremism, whether it is in Mali or Somalia or Afghanistan, is that the disease is not necessarily the individual country. The disease is the Islamist extremism, and that's what we have to fight; that's the narrative that we have to beat.

More of the same will just produce more of the same: less competitiveness, less growth, fewer jobs.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

On the one hand we have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable? But on the other hand let us look at the issue of dependency where we have trapped people in poverty through the extent of welfare that they have.

The benefits cap is right in principle because people don't pay their taxes so that families who could work don't work. People pay their taxes so we support people who really need to be supported.

I mean, I'm a conservative. I believe that, you know, if you borrow too much, you just build up debts for your children to pay off. You put pressure on interest rates. You put at risk your economy. That's the case in Britain. We're not a reserve currency, so we need to get on and deal with this issue.

I am a country boy at heart.

I am very proud to have kept my commitment to introduce the married couples' tax allowance. I think it will prove very popular. I think it's absolutely right that we recognise marriage in the tax system properly, and I would like to see that expanded.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

Terms are like shredded wheat - two are wonderful, but three might just be too many.

When you're taking the country through difficult times and difficult decisions you've got to take the country with you. That means permanently trying to make the argument that what you're doing is fair and seen to be fair.

You do not have to be an economist to know that putting up the cost of employing someone is a pretty barking thing to do when you're trying to get out of a recession.

I believe in the family. I believe in marriage, and I think it's such a great institution. I think men should be able to marry each other, and women should be able to marry each other.

Elections aren't about records, they're about plans and choices.

I think it true that, you know, sometimes things start to change even before a government changes and, actually, I think you can begin to see even the Labour machine beginning to understand that it has become over-reliant on targets and processes, that local governments have been over-bossed and bullied.

2012 has been an extraordinary year for our country. We cheered our Queen to the rafters with the Jubilee, showed the world what we're made of by staging the most spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Games ever and - let's not forget - punched way above our weight in the medals table.

The saddest moment as Prime Minister is writing letters to families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan or those who we have tried to help in hostage situations but it hasn't worked out.

In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked?

One of the pleas you get when you're talking to the tourist industry or the energy industry or the whoever is, 'Please, can we just have the same minister for longer than five minutes?'

I do think 'Gogglebox' is extraordinarily insightful, and I think if politicians want to understand how we are viewed at home, it's quite recommended viewing.

If you can work and if you're offered a job and you don't take it, you cannot continue to claim benefits. It will be extremely tough.

We will say to people that if you can work, and if you want to work, we will do everything we can to help you. We will give you the training, we will give you the support, we will give you the advice to get you going and get you back at work.

At a time when we're having to take such difficult decisions about how to cut back without damaging the things that matter the most, we should strain every sinew to cut error, waste and fraud.

We need the Chinese to - you know, spend more, save less - consume more and not be so focused on exports. There are big changes we need in the world.

Cap the well, yes. Clear up the mess, yes. Make compensation - yes, absolutely. But would it be right to have legislation that independently targets BP rather than other companies? I don't think that - would be right.

I think we need to just be very clear about what we're trying to do in Afghanistan. Frankly, we're not trying to create the perfect democracy. We're never going to create some ideal society. We are simply there for our own national security.

Yes, America must do the right thing, but to provide moral leadership, America must do it in the right way, too.

It does not seem to me that the steps which would be needed to make Britain - and others - more comfortable in their relationship in the European Union are inherently so outlandish or unreasonable.

If we are going to try to get across to the poorest people in the world that we care about their plight and we want them to join one world with the rest of us, we have got to make promises and keep promises.

I don't want to be Prime Minister of England, I want to be Prime Minister of the whole of the United Kingdom.

I watched, for the 17th and hopefully the last time, The 'Guns of Navarone' on New Year's Eve. I always watch just in case the explosives don't go off in the end. You have to watch the end, just to make sure it's OK.

I am not a British isolationist. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.

People are increasingly frustrated that decisions taken further and further away from them mean their living standards are slashed through enforced austerity or their taxes are used to bail out governments on the other side of the continent.

The EU must be able to act with the speed and flexibility of a network, not the cumbersome rigidity of a bloc. We must not be weighed down by an insistence on a one size fits all approach which implies that all countries want the same level of integration. The fact is that they don't and we shouldn't assert that they do.

Britain is not in the single currency, and we're not going to be. But we all need the eurozone to have the right governance and structures to secure a successful currency for the long term.

I want completing the single market to be our driving mission. I want us to be at the forefront of transformative trade deals with the US, Japan and India as part of the drive towards global free trade. And I want us to be pushing to exempt Europe's smallest entrepreneurial companies from more EU directives.