Mrs Thatcher Quotes

In the time of Mrs Thatcher the church, to give it its due, spoke out and was an enemy of the Conservative government. ~ Alan Green

In London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success. ~ Peter York

Like Marxism, Thatcherism is, in fact, riddled with contradictions. Mrs. Thatcher, on the other hand, is free of doubt; she is the label on the can of worms. ~ Julian Critchley

I think Mrs Thatcher did more damage to democracy, equality, internationalism, civil liberties, freedom in this country than any other Prime Minister this century. When the euphoria surrounding her departure subsides you will find that in a year or two's time there will not be a Tory who admits ever supporting her. People in the street will say, thank God she's gone ~ Tony Benn

Can you suggest any suitable aspersions to spread abroad about Mrs. Thatcher? It is idle to suggest she has unnatural relations with Mrs. Barbara Castle; what is needed is something socially lower: that she eats asparagus with knife and fork, or serves instant mash potatoes. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

Mrs Thatcher requires devotion as well as obedience. ~ Julian Critchley

On the other hand, the militant left, and many socialist intellectuals such as my old friend Ralph Miliband (whose sons were to become important figures in the offices of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown), also wrote off the Labour Party until the moment when it had been captured and was ready to become 'a real socialist party', whatever that meant. I outraged some of my friends by pointing out that they were not seriously trying to defeat Mrs Thatcher. Whatever they thought, 'they acted as though another Labour government like the ones we have had before from time to time since 1945 were not just unsatisfactory, but worse than no Labour government … (i.e.) worse than the only alternative government on offer, namely Mrs Thatcher's ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

The state owned monopolies are among the greatest millstones round the neck of the economy ... Liberals must stress at all times the virtues of the market, not only for efficiency but to enable the widest possible choice ... Much of what Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph say and do is in the mainstream of liberal philosophy. ~ Jo Grimond

She is a reflection of comfortable middle-class values that do not take seriously the continuing unemployment. What I particularly regret is that she does not take seriously the intellectual decline. Having given up the Empire and the mass production of industrial goods, Britain's future lay in its scientific and artistic pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher will be long remembered for the damage she has done. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Consider the following dialogue between an instructor (A) and two of his students (B, C)
A. What happened in the senate
1
on the Ides of March 44 B.C.?
B. Napoleon stabbed Mrs Thatcher.
C. Brutus did stab Caesar. In the senate it happened. It was Cassius that stabbed him. ~ A.M. Devine

In the period before the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything was so hedged, so mealy-mouthed. Then along came this woman who seemed to have no manners at all and said exactly what she thought. Everyone's eyes were popping and their jaws were dropping, and I really enjoyed that. ~ Tom Stoppard

I grew up in a very political household. My mum used to shout at the television. At Mrs. Thatcher. ~ Cherie Lunghi

Everyone wants to be immortal. Few are. Margaret Thatcher is. Why? Because her values are timeless, eternal. Tap anyone on the shoulder anywhere in the world, and ask what Mrs Thatcher believed in, and they will tell you. They can give a clear answer to what she 'stood for.' ~ Maurice Saatchi

Mrs. Thatcher responded to our liberation of Grenada with the sounds of a somewhat hypersensitive Neville Chamberlain. ~ Emmett Tyrrell

In the spring of 1990 I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to cover a summit meeting between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Herbert Walker Bush. This fairly routine political event took on sudden significance when, on the evening before the talks were scheduled to begin, Saddam Hussein announced that the independent state of Kuwait had, by virtue of a massive deployment of military force, become a part of Iraq. We were not to know that this act - and the name Saddam Hussein - would dominate international politics for the next decade and more, but it was still possible to witness something extraordinary: the sight of Mrs. Thatcher publicly inserting quantities of lead into George Bush's pencil. The spattering quill of a Ralph Steadman would be necessary to do justice to such a macabre yet impressive scene. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Mrs. Thatcher was a powerful figure at the time I was a student in London. And I admire her versatility and strength. ~ Tsai Ing-wen

She felt Britain should not be so dependent on coal. She was in favour of building up nuclear energy to break the dependence on coal, and the main opposition to nuclear came from the environment movement. Mrs. Thatcher thought she could trap them with the carbon emissions argument. ~ Nigel Lawson

Astro Types

Aries is the forward type
He doesn't lose his head
Except when charging headlong in
Where "Angels fear to tread".

Taurus has a pretty face
And likes her comfort best.
She'll eat you out of house and home
Then take the longest rest. ~ Bernie Morris, Colleen 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

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I was brought up by a Victorian Grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to Godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don't hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living. ~ 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

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

What is right for the family is right for Britain. ~ Margaret Thatcher

And certainly don't get caught by the press having too much to drink, you now, that sort of thing. ~ Denis 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

I certainly wasn't a fan of Thatcher's politics. People liked to label us as children of Thatcher. What nonsense. The real children of Thatcher came in the 1990s, and had no interest in politics. The Oasis, Britpop scene. ~ Gary Kemp

It is recorded how towards the end of the eighteenth century a Muslim visitor to England was taken to see the House of Commons at work. He later wrote of his astonishment at finding the that the British Parliament actually made laws and fixed punishments for their infraction - because unlike Muslims the English had not accepted a divine law revealed from heaven and therefore had to resort to such unsatisfactory expedients. Muslims still understand the expression 'the rule of law' very differently than do most Westerners. ~ Margaret Thatcher

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

More people deserted our party and we have never recovered. ~ Denis Thatcher

I had the patriotic conviction that, given great leadership of the sort I heard from Winston Churchill in the radio broadcasts to which we listened, there was almost nothing that the British people could not do. ~ Margaret Thatcher

If I were a German today, I would be proud, proud but also worried. I would be proud of the magnificent achievement of rebuilding my country, entrenching democracy and assuming the undoubtedly preponderant position in Europe. But a united Germany can't and won't subordinate its national interests in economic or in foreign policy to those of the Community indefinitely. Germany's new pre-eminence is a fact - and its power is a problem - as much for Germans as for the rest of Europe. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The lesson is clear. Inflation devalues us all. ~ Margaret Thatcher

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

My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

When I'm out of politics I'm going to run a business, it'll be called rent-a-spine ~ Margaret Thatcher

The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things - and get away with it - illustrates the degree to which the new dogma ... has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I am not one who, to quote an American author, believes that democracy and enterprise have finally won the battle of ideas - that we have therefore arrived at the end of history, and there is nothing left to fight for. That would be unutterably complacent, indeed foolish. There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within. ~ Margaret Thatcher

For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person. (on Margaret Thatcher) ~ Frankie Boyle

I hate extremes of any kind. Communism [seeks] the domination of the state over the individual ... All my life I have stood against banning Communism or other extremist organisations because, if you do that, they go underground and it gives them an excitement that they don't get if they are allowed to pursue their policies openly. We'll beat them into the ground on argument. ~ Margaret Thatcher

President Numeiri of Sudan is said to have remarked of Gadaffi that he was 'a man with a split personality - both of them evil'. ~ Margaret Thatcher

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure, ~ Margaret Thatcher

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

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Both the President and Mr Gorbachev have said that they want to see a world without nuclear weapons. I cannot see a world without nuclear weapons. Let me be practical about it. The knowledge is there to make them. So do not go too hard for that pie in the sky because, while everyone would like to see it, I do not believe it is going to come about. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today's political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order - as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice. ~ 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

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose. ~ Margaret Thatcher

There are no personal sympathies in politics. ~ Margaret Thatcher

There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditiionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe. ~ 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

Some people are happy to give feminists credit for things they fear - like abortion rights, contraception for teenagers, or gay liberation - but less willing to acknowledge that feminist activism brought about things they support, like better treatment for breast cancer or the opportunity for young girls to play soccer as well as lead cheers.

As Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon observe, "Although the word 'feminist' has become a pejorative term for to some American women, most women (and most men as well) support a feminist program: equal education, equal pay, child care, freedom from harassment and violence," and so on. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I applaud strong government, but not overweening government sustained by cronies, ciphers and a personality cult. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Timing is always crucial in delivering a jibe. John Major thought he'd won the football pools when he succeeded Thatcher. At his first Prime Minister's Questions, the Tories cheered wildly. He rose to his feet and in the split-second hush between his MPs falling silent and Major uttering his first words I yelled: 'Resign!' There was utter pandemonium. ~ Dennis Skinner

This is a woman who models herself on Margaret Thatcher, only without the warmth and compassion. ~ Charles Stross

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

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

I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country. ~ Margaret Thatcher

During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We do not achieve happiness or salvation in isolation from each other but as members of society ~ Margaret Thatcher

We Conservatives hate unemployment. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Our first duty to liberty is to keep our own. But it is also our duty - as Europeans - to keep alive in the Eastern as well as the Western half of our continent those ideas of human dignity which Europe gave to the world. Let us therefore resolve to keep the lamps of freedom burning bright so that all who look to the West from the shadows of the East need not doubt that we remain true to those human and spiritual values that lie at the heart of European civilization. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Not long after we started working for him I asked Bernard if he thought Thatcher was evil,'I said. 'He said it was like asking what jazz is. ~ Jack Womack