Margaret Thatcher

“Had I faltered we would have neither the success nor the international reputation we have. Yet when a woman is strong she is strident. If a man is strong, he's a good guy.”

“Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.”

“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.”

“I might have preferred iron - but bronze will do. It won't rust. This time I hope, the head will stay on.”

“There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it.”

“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.”

“If you have a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, I believe people will follow you. Democracy isn't just about deducing what the people want. Democracy is leading the people as well.”

“Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget – and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be.”

“Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose Socialism.”

“Home is where you come to when you've got nothing better to do.”

“You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.”

“I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.”

“To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.”

“One only gets to the top rung on the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly, all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you - suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, 'Well, I'll have a go, too.'”

“The acid test of politics is not what you say at the hustings, but what you actually do in government.”

“I am not a compromiser on fundamentals.”

“Wars are not caused by the buildup of weapons. They are caused when an aggressor believes he can achieve his objectives at an acceptable price.”

“Individualism has come in for an enormous amount of criticism over the years. It still does. It is widely assumed to be synonymous with selfishness...But the main reason why so many people in power have always disliked individualism is because it is individualists who are ever keenest to prevent the abuse of authority.”

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

“In order to unscramble some eggs the leader gotta have some balls”

“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.”

“Young people ought not to be idle, it is very bad for them.”

“When will Labour learn that you cannot build Jerusalem in Brussels.”

“If one generation is expected to carry an excessive burden on behalf of another, it will seek by every means to avoid it. It will either demand that past promises are broken, or it will not work, or it will not pay taxes, or the most talented people will leave. Socialist governments which have tried to tax 'till the pips squeak' have ample experience of that.”

“They [Federalist European Politicians] divide their time between court room, prison and debating chamber - giving a whole new meaning to the term 'conviction politician'.”

“There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.”

“What Britain needs is an iron lady.”

“Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.”

“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”

“It is no exaggeration to describe plain English as a fundamental tool of government.”

“If you want to cut your own throat, don't come to me for a bandage.”

“We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political”

“We had to do what we had to do - Britain is great again.”

“Good Conservatives always pay their bills. And on time. Not like the Socialists who run up other people's bills.”

“I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society - from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.”

“Being powerful is a lot like being a woman: If you have to tell someone that you are, invariably, you are not.”

“Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.”

“Most women defend themselves. It is the female of the species-it is the tigress and lioness in you which tends to defend when attacked.”

“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.”

“I believe in the acceptance of personal responsibility, freedom of choice, and the British Empire, which took freedom and the rule of law to countries which would never have known it otherwise.”

“The National Health Service is safe with us. The principle of adequate healthcare should be provided for all regardless of ability to pay must be the function of any arrangements for financing the NHS. We stand by that.”

“To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.”

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

“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.”

“What really gets me is this - it's very ironic that those who are most critical of extra tax are those who are most vociferous in demanding extra expenditure. What gets me even more is that having demanded that extra expenditure they are not prepared to face the consequences of their own action and stand by the necessity to get the tax to pay for it. I wish some of them had a bit more guts and courage than they have.”

“During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or another, from mainland Europe and the solution from outside it.”

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”

“There might be new technology, but technological progress itself was nothing new - and over the years it had not destroyed jobs, but created them.”

“For Dicey, writing in 1885, and for me reading him some seventy years later, the rule of law still had a very English, or at least Anglo-Saxon, feel to it. It was later, through Hayek's masterpieces "The Constitution of Liberty" and "Law, Legislation and Liberty" that I really came to think this principle as having wider application.”

“Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.”