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Margaret Thatcher Quotes
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Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was a British stateswoman who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to have been appointed. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.

A research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his Conservative government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.

On moving into 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation , flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and increasing unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her decisive re-election in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt in 1984.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge was widely unpopular, and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013 she died of a stroke in London at the age of 87. Always a controversial figure, she has nonetheless been lauded as one of the greatest, most influential and widest-known politicians in British history, even as arguments over Thatcherism persist.

✵ 13. October 1925 – 8. April 2013   •   Other names Margaret Thatcherová, Margaret Hilda Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher photo
Margaret Thatcher: 348   quotes 74   likes

Margaret Thatcher Quotes

“This is what we believe.”

Margaret Thatcher

Remarks on The Constitution of Liberty by F. A. Hayek during a visit to the Conservative Research Department (summer 1975), quoted in John Ranelagh, Thatcher's People (London: HarperCollins, 1991), p. ix.
Leader of the Opposition

“Marxism has had it.”

Margaret Thatcher

Press Conference for Washington Post and Newsweek (17 November 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107390
Third term as Prime Minister

“The fightback begins now!”

Margaret Thatcher

In a telephone call to Michael Portillo the morning after the 1997 General Election
Post-Prime Ministerial

“I hope to go on and on.”

Margaret Thatcher

TV Interview for BBC (11 May 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106615
Second term as Prime Minister

Hope

“The lady is not for turning.”

Margaret Thatcher

10 Downing Street, Mémoires, 1993

“When you fight – fight to win.”

Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher, Margaret (2002). Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095912-6.

Fight

“Don't allow tyrants and aggressors to get away with it”

Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher, Margaret (2002). Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095912-6.

“Don't take public opinion for granted – but don't either underrate the degree to which good people will endure sacrifices for a worthwhile cause”

Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher, Margaret (2002). Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095912-6.

People

“Don't fall into the trap of imagining that the West can remake societies”

Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher, Margaret (2002). Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095912-6.

Imagination

“I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence. On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Central Council (15 March 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102655
Leader of the Opposition

Faith , Freedom , Personality , Children

“I was determined to accept the invitation I had earlier received from General Jaruzelski to go to Poland. I always felt the greatest affection and admiration for this nation of indomitable patriots, whose traditions and distinctive identity the Prussians, Austrians and Russians (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and the Nazis and communists (in the twentieth century) had sought vainly to extinguish. I could not forget the Polish airmen who had fought with the RAF against Nazism, and how a war begun over the freedom of Poland had ended leaving them trapped under tyranny.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 777

War , Freedom , Forgetting

“The press was full of outraged criticism of the community charge from Conservative supporters. What hurt me was that the very people who had always looked to me for protection from exploitation by the socialist state were those who were suffering most. These were the people who were just above the level at which community charge benefit stopped but who were by no means well off and who had scrimped and saved to buy their homes.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 658

Home , Hurt , Support , People

“I never confused the leader page of the Guardian with vox populi.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 561

“I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

On the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Nassau in October 1985, where Thatcher opposed sanctions on South Africa
Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 517

Truth , Home , Time , Personality

“I have enormous admiration for the Jewish people, inside or outside Israel. There have always been Jewish members of my staff and indeed my Cabinet. In fact I just wanted a Cabinet of clever, energetic people – and frequently that turned out to be the same thing. My old constituency of Finchley has a large Jewish population. In the thirty-three years I represented it I never had a Jew come in poverty and desperation to one of my constituency surgeries. They had always been looked after by their own community.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 509

People , Communication

“Unlike some of my colleagues, I never ceased to believe that, other things being equal, the level of unemployment was related to the extent of trade union power. The unions had priced many of their members out of jobs by demanding excessive wages for insufficient output, so making British goods uncompetitive.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 272

Making love , Relation ships

“Socialism is a creed of the state. It regards ordinary human beings as the raw material for its schemes of social change. But we put our faith in people—in the millions of people who spend what they earn—not what other people earn. Who make sacrifices for their young family or their elderly parents. Who help their neighbours and take care of their neighbourhoods. The sort of people I grew up with. These are the people whom I became Leader of this Party to defend.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the Conservative Central Council in Cheltenham (31 March 1990) https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108051
Third term as Prime Minister

Family , Faith , People , Help

“The Delors report is aimed at a federal Europe, a common currency and a common economic policy, which would take many economic policies, including fiscal policy, out of the hands of the House, and that is completely unacceptable. It would also require a treaty amendment, which we do not believe would ever be passed by the House because of the lack of sovereignty that it would imply.”

Margaret Thatcher

Prime Ministers' Questions (27 April 1989) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1989/apr/27/engagements#S6CV0151P0_19890427_HOC_126
Third term as Prime Minister

Housing

“In my work, you get used to criticisms. Of course you do, because there are a lot of people trying to get you down, but I always cheer up immensely if one is particularly wounding because I think well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. That is why my father always taught me: never worry about anyone who attacks you personally; it means their arguments carry no weight and they know it.”

Margaret Thatcher

From an interview for Italian television (RAI) (10 March 1986) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106223
Second term as Prime Minister

Personality , Thinking , People

“I believe in the British lion and I believe that the British character is lion-hearted, and I believe that it has not been lion-hearted in some of the post-War period, and I want it to get back to being lion hearted.”

Margaret Thatcher

Second term as Prime Minister
Source: Radio Interview for BBC Radio 3 (17 December 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105934

War , Heart

“And never forget that the Marxist societies call themselves, and indeed are, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some of the aims of socialism, are the aims of a Marxist society, and they result in the subjugation of the rights of people to political theory. Because the Marxist system has become morally and materially bankrupt, citizens who live beneath its yoke see hope in our ideals. Ideals which limit the power of the State so that the varied talents and abilities of each person may flourish giving dignity and meaning to life. Ideals which respect the family, its loyalties, affections and responsibilities. Ideals where the rule of law is just and impartially administered. Those who live under the heel of Marxist tyranny look with envy at the very things we take for granted. They know that politics is about more than economics in a free society. So do we—we belong to the oldest and most enduring democratic Party in the world.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Women’s Conference (20 May 1981) https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104653
First term as Prime Minister

Life , Family , Law , Loyalty

“I am the rebel head of an establishment government.”

Margaret Thatcher

Remark to a reception at 10 Downing Street (24 June 1980), quoted in Norman St John-Stevas, The Two Cities (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 83
First term as Prime Minister

“To me there is only one way to judge a person, whatever his background, whatever his colour, whatever his religion, and that is what that person is, and not by his race or creed. That is what I believe in, that is what I will tell everyone and that is what I try to achieve everything.”

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the Young Conservative Conference in Eastbourne (13 February 1977), quoted in The Times (14 February 1977), p. 3
Leader of the Opposition

Way , Personality , Religion

“It's time to get up! It's time go to work! It's time to put the great, back into Great Britain!”

Margaret Thatcher

Source: movie The Iron Lady

Time

“Human rights did not begin with the French Revolution instead, they really stem from a mixture of Judaism and Christianity”

Margaret Thatcher

Said in 1989 according to Anders Breivik & Europe's blind right eye https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/anders-breivik-europes-blind-right-eye/article2290619.ece by Praveen Swami published on July 25, 2011 and updated: AUGUST 16, 2016
1980s

“There is no way in which one can buck the market.”

Margaret Thatcher

Prime Ministers' Questions (10 March 1988) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1988/mar/10/engagements#S6CV0129P0_19880310_HOC_156
Third term as Prime Minister

Way