Margaret Thatcher Quotes

The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We Conservatives hate unemployment. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever. ~ Charlie Higson

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop. ~ Margaret Thatcher

People constantly requesting government intervention are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The woman's mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its activities. ~ Margaret Thatcher

A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country's flag. ~ Margaret Thatcher

No British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher. ~ Morrissey

Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose socialism. ~ Margaret Thatcher

New ideas are created when they can be discussed freely, but if there is a CORRECT view then you cease to have new ideas ~ Margaret Thatcher

There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people's lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Rooster, maybe well crows, but the eggs still bears the chicken. ~ Margaret Thatcher

[When asked how it felt to be a female prime minister:] I don't know: I've never experienced the alternative. ~ Margaret Thatcher

What I said was Britain was ready for another Hitler, which is quite a different thing to saying it needs another Hitler. I stand by that opinion - in fact I was ahead of my time in voicing it. There are in Britain right now parallels with the rise of the Nazi Party in pre-war Germany. A demoralised nation whose empire had disintegrated." Two years later, Margaret Thatcher was elected.
- Quoting David Bowie from 1977 ~ Mark Paytress

I have very strong views about Europe. We're quite the best country. We rescued them. We're not going to get entangled with them. We've got to keep our own independence. Is that clear? ~ Margaret Thatcher

Gentlemen, if we don't cut spending we will be bankrupt. Yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it in order to live. Should we withhold the medicine? No. We are not wrong. We did not seek election and win in order to manage the decline of a great nation. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I have never knowingly made a non-controversial speech in my life. ~ Margaret Thatcher

When people are free to choose, they choose freedom ~ Margaret Thatcher

Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge. - Margaret Thatcher ~ Donald Rumsfeld

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty. ~ Margaret Thatcher

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The Margaret Thatcher syndrome, that is, the woman who achieves seniority, but refuses any gender identification and indeed whose policies harmed many women, highlights that gender sensitivity is more significant in leading change than the biological sex of post-holders. ~ Louise Morley

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Of course, to be a mother and a housewife is a vocation of a very high kind. But I simply felt that it was not the whole of my vocation. I knew that I also wanted a career. A phrase that Irene Ward, MP for Tynemouth, and I often used was that 'while the home must always be the centre of one's life, it should not be the boundary of one's ambitions'. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history. ~ Monica Crowley

Leadership is about having principles. A leader must have a vision and principles that will endure for all time and must always be true to these principles, applying them to changing circumstances ~ Margaret Thatcher

We need to create a mood where it is everywhere thought morally right for as many people as possible to acquire capital. ~ Margaret Thatcher

He was flying over India now, still making notes. He remembered hearing an Indian politician on TV talking about the British prime minister and being unable to pronounce her name properly. "Mrs. Torture," he kept saying. "Mrs. Margaret Torture." This was unaccountably funny. ~ Salman Rushdie

Please don't use the word tough. People might get the impression that I don't care. And I do care, very deeply. Resilient, I think. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The government are considering spending £3million on a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher when she dies. For £3million they could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we'll dig a hole deep enough to deliver her to Satan ourselves. ~ Frankie Boyle

It's okay, Chancellor, you can touch them. Sometimes I just strip down to a tank top and stare at these guns in front of a mirror all day long. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The desire to win is born in most of us. The will to win is a matter of training. The manner of winning is a matter of honour. ~ Margaret Thatcher

She ( Margaret Thatcher )is democratic enough to talk down to anyone ~ Austin Mitchell

I'll stay until I'm tired of it. So long as Britain needs me, I shall never be tired of it. ~ Margaret Thatcher

New technology is the true friend of full employment; the indispensable ally of progress; and the surest guarantee of prosperity. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I might have preferred iron, but bronze will do. It won't rust. And, this time I hope, the head will stay on. ~ Margaret Thatcher

You don't win by just being against things, you only win by being for things and making your message perfectly clear. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Then she said, with mock horror, "She's going to bring some of her old wigs, if you can believe it." She rubbed her bare head with her free hand. "I'll look like a zombie Margaret Thatcher. ~ Patrick Ness

You cannot make an omelet without breaking some balls ~ Margaret Thatcher

Isn't a policy of conventional weapons, with the terrible bombs raining down, with the missiles, with the aircraft, with the submarines, with the torpedoes, with the tanks, with chemical weapons - isn't that based on the possibility of threat? ~ Margaret Thatcher

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Let's make it clear: the Conservative Party has no plans for new NHS charges. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Personal virtue is no substitute for political hard-headedness. ~ Margaret Thatcher

It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The facts of life are conservative. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that "we're number one. ~ Fareed Zakaria

We do not have a freehold on the earth, only a full repairing lease ~ Margaret Thatcher

For the first time perhaps since Margaret Thatcher, we will have at the head of the Conservative Party someone who is genuinely an equal match for Tony Blair. ~ Tim Yeo

You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure. ~ Margaret Thatcher

This lady is not for turning. ~ Margaret Thatcher

John Redwood is a young man but, let's face it, so was Margaret Thatcher in 1975. ~ Edward Leigh

You turn if you want to. The Lady's not for turning. ~ Margaret Thatcher

If you just set out to be liked, you will be prepared to compromise on anything at anytime, and would achieve nothing. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was the first political leader in any major country to warn of the dangers of climate change ~ Ed Miliband

In those days one advantage of being a woman was that there was a basic courtesy towards us on which we could draw - something which today's feminists have largely dissipated. ~ Margaret Thatcher

No great goal was ever easily achieved. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Being prime minister is a lonely job ... you cannot lead from the crowd. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The spirit of the South Atlantic was the spirit of Britain at her best. It has been said that we surprised the world, that British patriotism was rediscovered in those spring days. It was never really lost. But it would be no bad thing if the feeling that swept the country then were to continue to inspire us. For if there was any doubt about the determination of the British people it was removed by the men and women who, a few months ago, brought a renewed sense of pride and self-respect to our country. ~ Margaret Thatcher

There are some remarkable parallels between basketball and politics. Michael Jordan has already mastered the skill most needed for political success: how to stay aloft without visible means of support. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Free enterprise has enabled the creative and the acquisitive urges of man to be given expression in a way which benefits all members of society. Let free enterprise fight back now, not for itself, but for all those who believe in freedom. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper. ~ Margaret Thatcher

But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You're looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues. ~ George H. W. Bush

Bribing regimes to comply with requirements which they should have acknowledged in the first place is not a process that appeals to me. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 - a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though - my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister. ~ Sara Sheridan

Fackelmann claimed to have started a Log just to keep track of Kite's attempted pickup lines
surefire lines like e.g. 'You're the second most beautiful woman I've ever seen, the first most beautiful woman I've ever seem being former Bristish Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,' and 'If you came home with me I'm unusually confident that I could achieve an erection,' and said that if Kite wasn't still cherry at twenty-three and a half it was proof of some kind of divine-type grace. ~ David Foster Wallace

Do you know, one of the greatest problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas? Now, thoughts and ideas, that interests me. ~ Margaret Thatcher

[M]ore than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything - security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we should recall the Athenians' dire fate whenever we confront demands for increased state paternalism. ~ Margaret Thatcher

There is a nonsense about intelligent women not being beautiful. ~ Margaret Thatcher

A leader is someone who knows what they want to achieve and can communicate that. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Defeat? I do not recognize the meaning of the word. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians do, to take counsel together, their purpose is not ( or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit - something which may be quite different. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Citizenship should be based on those who have a close and real relationship with this country and its inhabitants. ~ Margaret Thatcher

(A unified) 'Europe' is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We are a British nation with British characteristics. Every country can take some small minorities and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The larger Europe grows, the more diverse must be the forms of co-operation it requires. Instead of a centralised bureaucracy, the model should be a market - not only a market of individuals and companies, but also a market in which the players are governments.
Thus governments would compete with each other for foreign investments, top management and high earners through lower taxes and less regulation.
Such a market would impose a fiscal discipline on governments because they would not want to drive away expertise and business.
It would also help to establish which fiscal and regulatory policies produced the best overall economic results.
No wonder socialists don't like it. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Let our children grow tall and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I think our support for the EEC has been very half-hearted. You really cannot join any group of nations and spend all your time criticizing it. The EEC is free Europe getting together. Had we had some vision like that after the First World War, we might never had the Second. My son does not have to go and fight as his father had to fight. Surely that is the most valuable thing of all, the reason for keeping Europe together. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. ~ Margaret Thatcher

By and large, the artistic establishment disapproved of Margaret Thatcher. ~ Craig Brown

We must not fall into the trap of projecting our own morality onto the Soviet leaders. They do not share our aspirations, they are not constrained by our ethics, they always consider themselves exempt from the rules that bind other states. ~ Margaret Thatcher

My job is to stop Britain from going red. ~ Margaret Thatcher

There are too few rich and too few profits. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Anyone who supposed that when Margaret Thatcher left Number Ten she was going to take a Trappist vow did not know that formidable politician. ~ Chris Patten

I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships. ~ Nina Bawden

I started out in life with two great advantages: No money and good parents. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Everything a politician promises at election time has to be paid for either by higher taxation or by borrowing. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky toffee pudding, but one with nasty bogeys planted inside. There was much of the 'Margaret Thatcher who was lucky enough to know me,' especially from her own side of the House. ~ Simon Hoggart

The Government wants a peaceful settlement. But we totally reject a peaceful sell-out. ~ Margaret Thatcher

It is quite clear that history will record that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister this country has had since Churchill. ~ Nigel Lawson

If it's me against 48, I feel sorry for the 48. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I'm also very much aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile, you set up a constitution suitable for democracy, you put it into effect, elections were held, and then, in accordance with the result, you stepped down. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I believe our way of life is infinitely superior for every human being than any which the Communist creed can offer. ~ Margaret Thatcher

If a woman like Eva Peron with no ideals can get that far, think how far I can go with the ideals that I have. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We were told our campaign wasn't sufficiently slick. We regard that as a compliment. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I'm back ... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'. ~ Margaret Thatcher