Margaret Thatcher Quotes

“The application of collective guilt, running from one generation to another, is a dangerous doctrine which would leave few modern nations unscathed.”

“Fear is not the basis for foreign policy.”

“I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.”

“My first guiding principle is this: willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.”

“I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.”

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.”

“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.”

“I shall fight on, I shall fight to win.”

“We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all.”

“New technology is the true friend of full employment; the indispensable ally of progress; and the surest guarantee of prosperity.”

“While the Soviet Union has imposed its rule on its neighbours and drawn an iron curtain between east and west, we in Great Britain have given freedom and independence to more than forty-eight countries whose populations now number more than a thousand million - a quarter of the world's total.”

“We do not believe that if you cut back what government does you diminish its authority. On the contrary, a government that did less, and therefore did better, would strengthen its authority.”

“It's a funny old world.”

“I am not a compromiser on fundamentals.”

“Most women are far more intelligent than people give them credit for.”

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

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

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

“To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only this to say, ‘You turn if you want; the lady’s not for turning.”

“You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure.”

“America, my friends, is the only country in the world actually founded on liberty - the only one. People went to America to be free.”

“Dictators can be deterred, they can be crushed - but they can never be appeased.”

“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.”

“I want to get totally rid of class distinction. As someone put it one of the papers this morning: Marks and Spencer have triumphed over Karl Marx and Engels.”

“We went back on a very similar manifesto to things I believe in. The difference is that after eighteen months to two years he did the biggest U-turn on policy of all time and started to go the wrong way. In the end, that cost us the next election.”