Margaret Thatcher Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect... To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.”

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.”

“What Britain needs is an iron lady.”

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

“In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world.”

“The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.”

“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.”

“People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.”

“Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.”

“No great goal was ever easily achieved.”

“If we are safe today, it is because America has stood with us. If we are to remain safe tomorrow, it will be because America remains powerful and self-confident. When, therefore, the Americans face difficulties, we need to say to them more clearly: We are with you.”

“I'm happy as a dog with two dicks”

“I don't think any woman in power really has a happy life unless she's got a large number of women friends ... because you sometimes must go and sit down and let down your hair with someone you can trust totally.”

“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.”

“There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”

“Never in the history of human credit has so much been owed.”

“Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.”

“I never hugged him, I bombed him.”

“When government does its job properly people are free to do theirs.”

“Today I have lost one of my dearest friends, England one of her greatest men. Keith Joseph understood that it was necessary to win again the intellectual argument for freedom, and that to do this we must start from first principles. He was in many ways an unlikely revolutionary. For all his towering intellect, he was deeply humble. He spoke out boldly, however hostile the audience. Yet he hated to give offence. Above all, his integrity shone out in everything he said and did. His best memorial lies in the younger generations of politicians whom he inspired. But for me he is irreplaceable.”

“There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter—there is no charm or bar against it.”