Johann Lamont quotes:

In my mind, the CalMac ferry is linked with the joy of arrival, the sadness of departure, the loss of loved ones brought home by ferry to rest in island soil. It is friendships made and a working life begun.

We have a government that boasts about free education. Those of us who have scratched below the surface know it is costing us by denying opportunities for others to attend college or university.

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.

Fair tax does not mean we don't want to encourage wealth creation. Wealth creation is how we raise the money to pay for world class schools and hospitals, for proper care of the weak, and dignity for the elderly.

The Scottish Labour Party should work as equal partners with the U.K. party, just as Scotland is an equal partner in the United Kingdom. Scotland has chosen home rule - not London rule.

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.

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

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

That's a really healthy thing - family will always protect you from yourself.

Schools are not exam factories for the rat race.

The job of the Scottish Labour Party is to represent working people and represent Scotland.

I used to go to a Gaelic class on a Saturday morning, but I never felt myself that I could speak it properly.

My uncle was skipper on the old Claymore sailing out from Oban to the Inner Hebrides. My father worked for MacBraynes all his life, on freight boats and then on ferries crossing to Skye, Barra, Uist, the small isles and Iona.

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.

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

If I believe we need free personal care, we need an honest discussion about what it costs with a well-managed, well-trained workforce.

We need to find a way of having a conversation across the parties on how you fund local government.

I don't agree with the Tories on most things.

While I'm leader, nothing will be off limits - there will not be one policy, one rule, one way of working which cannot be changed.

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

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.

Schools are not exam factories for the rat race."

With the emergence of the Internet, it has become possible for creative and bold people with focus and determination to establish businesses in some of our remotest communities. But these will not work if they do not have reliable transport routes responding to the impatient modern customer.

I spent ridiculous amounts of time as an activist and volunteer and was a teacher for 20 years.

There is a circus around politics. But if you think it is a game, then you forget what the purpose of politics actually is.

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.

We must listen and learn, show humility and seek again to talk for and to people's ambitions and concerns.

I guess it feels to me that the political argument that has been lost in my lifetime is taxation. How do you engage in that debate when people don't trust politicians at all? It is almost impossible to start a conversation about taxation.

Social injustice is what puts Scotland at its greatest disadvantage, and restoring the 50p tax rate will start to fight that.

We will renew our party, to rebuild our land - and we will do it by being a better Labour, real Labour, Scottish Labour.

I remember going to see Billy Graham in a cinema in Glasgow, and he was down in London. I used to go and hear preachers, and then we always went to church and Sunday school. That mattered a lot to me.

My granny would come out and stay with us in the winter, and we would listen to the reports from the coastal stations and have a discussion in the middle of Glasgow about what the weather was like in Tiree.

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

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

The idea that an independent Scotland - having separated assets and liabilities from the rest of the U.K. - would expect the rest of the U.K. to be a lender of last resort, and of course be kind to them, doesn't make any sense.

My working life has always been wrapped up in doing my job to the best of my abilities and doing the best for my family. It is not a contest between the two.

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.

As a youngster, I travelled every year across the sea to Tiree. On occasion, we ventured to Skye on the Kyleakin-Kyle of Lochalsh ferry, where there is now a bridge.

The Labour Party in 2011 was in an exceptionally bad place. We'd been hammered in an election. We didn't see the scale of it coming.

Those of us who were part of creating the Scottish parliament believe we must always test constitutional arrangements. The real test is where do the powers lie? Is it in the best interests of Scotland?

The next phase is to 2016, and yes, I want to be First Minister because I believe I have the life experience, and I've got a commitment to change.

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

I'd always step up to the mark to serve the people of the country.

I made a different decision to send my children to the local state school.

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

If you don't accept there is a problem, then it is hard to debate things.

I didn't particularly want to go to Westminster - not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.

Scotland cannot be the only 'something for nothing' country in the world.

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

We shall seek debate without division or rancour.

What I will say will not always please you, but what I say will always be honest and true and how I genuinely see it.

I'm pretty proud of having completed a marathon myself, so I can only imagine the pride that real athletes feel when they are picked for the Olympic or the Paralympic Games.

Maybe I was just born to argue with men.

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.