Margaret Thatcher: Trending quotes (page 14)

“All too often the ills of this country are passed off as those of society. Similarly, when action is required, society is called upon to act. But society as such does not exist except as a concept. Society is made up of people. It is people who have duties and beliefs and resolve. It is people who get things done. She prefers to think in terms of the acts of individuals and families as the real sinews of society rather than of society as an abstract concept. Her approach to society reflects her fundamental belief in personal responsibility and choice. To leave things to ‘society’ is to run away from the real decisions, practical responsibility and effective action.”

Margaret Thatcher

Interview 23 September 1987, as quoted in by Douglas Keay, Woman's Own, 31 October 1987, pp. 8–10. A transcript of the interview http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106689 at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website differs in several particulars, but not in substance. The magazine transposed the statement in bold, often quoted out of context, from a later portion of Thatcher's remarks:
Third term as Prime Minister

People , Family , Thinking , Decision

“It has been my strategy, believing passionately as I do in what we stand for, to take a different direction, to make people see that was the better direction; for us to stay in power long enough to make the Labour Party realise that their policies will never be re-elected and they must do a fundamental reappraisal of their policies and start two generations later what Gaitskell wanted to do but failed…I myself do not think one more push will be quite enough…I think you are likely to have it much more up nearer towards the year 2000, then you will have the fundamental realignment that should have been brought about half a century before.”

Margaret Thatcher

Interview for The Standard (13 March 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106595
Second term as Prime Minister

People , Thinking , Passion

“All corporatism – even when practised in societies where hard work, enterprise and cooperation are as highly valued as in Korea – encourages inflexibility, discourages individual accountability, and risks magnifying errors by concealing them.”

Margaret Thatcher book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 121

Error

“It is always important in matters of high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge.”

Margaret Thatcher book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 104

People , Thinking

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

Margaret Thatcher

Attributed to her in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3637706/Quite-Interesting.html and other sources. Actually an adapted Lyndon Johnson quote "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'"
Misattributed

“No-one in their senses wants nuclear weapons for their own sake, but equally, no responsible prime minister could take the colossal gamble of giving up our nuclear defences while our greatest potential enemy kept their's. Policies which would throw out all American nuclear bases…would wreck NATO and leave us totally isolated from our friends in the United States, and friends they are. No nation in history has ever shouldered a greater burden nor shouldered it more willingly nor more generously than the United States. This Party is pro-American. And we must constantly remind people what the defence policy of the [Labour] Party would mean. Their idea that by giving up our nuclear deterrent, we could somehow escape the result of a nuclear war elsewhere is nonsense, and it is a delusion to assume that conventional weapons are sufficient defence against nuclear attack. And do not let anyone slip into the habit of thinking that conventional war in Europe is some kind of comfortable option. With a huge array of modern weapons held by the Soviet Union, including chemical weapons in large quantities, it would be a cruel and terrible conflict. The truth is that possession of the nuclear deterrent has prevented not only nuclear war but also conventional war and to us, peace is precious beyond price. We are the true peace party.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105763
Second term as Prime Minister

War , People , Truth , Peace

“It was not a Government that built up the skill and craft of this country…It was private individuals who patiently persevered, building up their businesses bit by bit…Their success provided employment for others and greatly benefited the community as a whole. This was the spirit that made England great and can restore her once again. Do you want it to perish for a soul-less Socialist system, or to live to recreate a glorious Britain?”

Margaret Thatcher

Article for Gravesend and Dartford Reporter (28 January 1950) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/100856
1950s

Soul , Communication , Business , Success

“Singapore's success shows us that:”

Margaret Thatcher book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

A country's wealth need not depend on natural resources, it may even ultimately benefit from their absence
The greatest resource of all is Man
What government has to do is to set the framework for human talent to flourish.
Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 118

Success

“In the desperate situation of Britain today, our party needs the support of all who value the traditional ideals of Toryism: compassion, and concern for the individual and his freedom; opposition to excessive State power; the right of the enterprising, the hard-working and the thrifty to succeed and to reap the rewards of success and pass some of them on to their children; encouragement of that infinite diversity of choice that is an essential of freedom; the defence of widely-distributed private property against the Socialist State; the right of a man to work without oppression by either employer or trade union boss. There is a widespread feeling in the country that the Conservative party has not defended these ideals explicitly and toughly enough, so that Britain is set on a course towards inevitable Socialist mediocrity. That course must not only be halted, it must be reversed.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech in Finchley (31 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102605
Shadow Secretary for Environment

Children , Feeling , Support , Freedom

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

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107352
Third term as Prime Minister
Variant: A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country's flag.

Country

“Everyone had something unique to offer in life and their responsibility was to develop those gifts - and heroes come from all backgrounds.”

Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

Life

“The freedom of peoples depends fundamentally on the rule of law, a fair legal system. The place to have trials or accusations is a court of law, the Common Law that has come right up from Magna Carta, which has come right up through the British courts – a court of law is the place where you deal with these matters. If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it.”

Margaret Thatcher

Criticising the Thames Television programme "Death on the Rock", in an interview with Hatsuhisa Takashima of NHK Japanese television (29 April 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107058
Third term as Prime Minister

People , Law , Freedom , Dependency

“I set out to destroy socialism because I felt it was at odds with the character of the people. We were the first country in the world to roll back the frontiers of socialism, then roll forward the frontiers of freedom. We reclaimed our heritage; we are renewing it and carrying it forward.”

Margaret Thatcher

Quoted from Margaret Thatcher, Article for Newsweek “Don’t undo my work” (27 April 1992).
Post-Prime Ministerial

People , World , Freedom , Country

“Nazism (national Socialism) and communism (international socialism) were but two sides of the same coin.”

Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

Communication

“Each demand for security, whether of employment, income or social position, implied the exclusion from such benefits of those outside the particular privileged group - and would generate demands for countervailing privileges from the excluded groups. Eventually, in such a situation every will lose.”

Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

“May I make one point absolutely clear; the time we went there was a hunger strike on in the Maze, no-one has asked me, no-one in official authority or in high places has ever asked me to give political status to people who've been convicted of terrible crimes like murder, wounding, maming, causing explosions. That used to be asked. I think one of the reasons why we're not asked now is because we have got over our viewpoint and because everyone knows that this government will not budge on things which it regards as vital. There is no such thing as political murder. There is murder. There is no such things as causing explosions for political purposes and risking the lives of innocent men women and children. It is causing explosion, it is a crime, and they know that neither I, nor any member of my government will be moved on this. And we won through on that. And everyone knows it.”

Margaret Thatcher

Radio Interview for BBC Radio 4 The World this Weekend (4 January 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104477
First term as Prime Minister

Women , Men , Hunger , Children

“If we do not keep alive the flame of freedom that flame will go out, and every noble ideal will die with it. It is not by force of weapons but by force of ideas that we seek to spread liberty to the world' s oppressed. It is not only ideals, but conscience that impels us to do so. Is there conscience in the Kremlin? Do they ever ask themselves what is the purpose of life? What is it all for? Does the way they handled the Korean airliner atrocity suggest that they ever considered such questions? No. Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil. To them it is the system that counts, and all men must conform.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech at the Winston Churchill Foundation Award dinner (29 September 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105450
Second term as Prime Minister

Life , Men , World , Way

“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the Industrial League of Orange County (14 March 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108266
Post-Prime Ministerial

People , Freedom

“The greatest division this nation has ever seen were the conflicts of trade unions towards the end of a Labour Government…That trade union movement…used their power against their members. They made them come out on strike when they didn't want to. They loved secondary picketing. They went and demonstrated outside companies where there was no dispute whatsoever, and sometimes closed them down. They were acting as they were later in the coal strike, before my whole trade union laws were through of this Government. They were out to use their power to hold the nation to ransom, to stop power from getting to the whole of manufacturing industry to damage people's jobs, to stop power from getting to every house in the country, power, heat and light to every housewife, every child, every school, every pensioner. You want division; you want conflict; you want hatred. There it was. It was that which Thatcherism—if you call it that—tried to stop. Not by arrogance, but by giving power to the ordinary, decent, honourable, trade union member who didn’t want to go on strike. By giving power to him over the Scargills of this world.”

Margaret Thatcher

TV Interview for BBC1 Panorama (8 June 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106647
Second term as Prime Minister

Love , People , World , School

“Our sovereignty does not come from Brussels—it is ours by right and by heritage.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech in the House of Commons (26 June 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108276
Post-Prime Ministerial