Margaret Thatcher citations (354 citations, Page 10)

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

“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.”

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Margaret Thatcher

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

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

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Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

“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.”

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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.”

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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

“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.”

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Margaret Thatcher

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

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

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Margaret Thatcher

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

“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.”

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Margaret Thatcher

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

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

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Margaret Thatcher

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

“We could have stopped this, we could still do so… But for the most part, we in the west have actually given comfort to the aggressor.”

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Margaret Thatcher

On Western non-intervention in Bosnia, as reported in 'Thatcher warns of "Holocaust" risk in Bosnia appeal' by Anthony Bevins and Stephen Goodwin in The Independent (17 December 1992)
Post-Prime Ministerial

“1989 will be remembered for decades to come as the year when half the people of half our continent began to throw off their chains. The messages on our banners in 1979—freedom, opportunity, family, enterprise, ownership—are now inscribed on the banners in Leipzig, Warsaw, Budapest and even Moscow…In 1979, we knew that we were starting a British revolution; in fact, we were the pioneers of a world revolution.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (13 October 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107789
Third term as Prime Minister

“Communism never sleeps, never changes its objectives, nor must we. Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. Then one day we might export a little to those peoples who have to live without it. Let no one be under any misunderstanding about the inflexible resolve of Her Majesty's Government to strengthen our defences and to play our full part in the defence of a free Europe.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech at "Youth for Europe" Rally (2 June 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104088
First term as Prime Minister

“It may be inverted snobbishness but I don't want old style, Old Etonian Tories of the old school to succeed me and go back to the old complacent, consensus ways. John Major is someone who has fought his way up from the bottom and is far more in tune with the skilled and ambitious and worthwhile working classes than Douglas Hurd is.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Said to Woodrow Wyatt (23 November 1990), Sarah Curtis (ed.), The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt. Volume Two (Pan, 2000), pp. 401-402.
Third term as Prime Minister

“We now know that bin Laden's terrorists had been planning their outrages for years. The propagation of their mad, bad ideology – decency forbids calling it a religion – had been taking place before our eyes. We were just too blind to see it. In short, the world had never ceased to be dangerous. But the West had ceased to be vigilant. Surely that is the most important lesson of this tragedy, and we must learn it if our civilisation is to survive.”

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Margaret Thatcher livre Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

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

“For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions.”

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Margaret Thatcher livre Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 50

“Pennies don't fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech at Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=104167
First term as Prime Minister

“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.”

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Margaret Thatcher livre Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 65

“The interviewer Stina Dabrowski said to Thatcher: "So when people criticise you and say what it led to the period when you were prime minister was that the rich became richer and the poor and the became poorer." Thatcher replied "That is not correct. The poor also became less poor, because the benefits at the bottom for those who are genuinely poor do go up. Money spend on education goes up and on the Health Service goes up so that is not true. What happens you might get a bigger gap but you might start here creates a small gap particularly if you're paying top tax today - 83% on earnings and income and 98% on savings. Your gap goes up, it does go up, but the whole thing moves up the gap, you must give people incentive!”

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Margaret Thatcher

Quoted from an interview with Stina Dabrowski. Margaret Thatcher on rising to power, and resigning from it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_gnhy7eT1s (1995)
Post-Prime Ministerial

“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Attributed to her in Commons debates, 2003-07-02, column 407 http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030702/debtext/30702-10.htm and Commons debates, 2004-06-15 column 697 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo040615/debtext/40615-20.htm#40615-20_spnew1. According to a letter http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/11/02/nosplit/dt0201.xml&site=15&page=0 to the Daily Telegraph by Alistair Cooke on 2 November 2006, this sentiment originated with Loelia Ponsonby, one of the wives of 2nd Duke of Westminster who said "Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life". In a letter http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3633852/Letters-to-the-Daily-Telegraph.html published the next day, also in the Daily Telegraph, Hugo Vickers claims Loelia Ponsonby admitted to him that she had borrowed it from Brian Howard. There is no solid evidence that Margaret Thatcher ever quoted this statement with approval, or indeed shared the sentiment.
Misattributed

“Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man.”

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Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

“My job is to stop Britain from going red.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Institute of Public Relations (2 November 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103192
Leader of the Opposition

“I'm the world's greatest fan of your President [Ronald Reagan], as you know. I think he's done terrific things and I think that in his recent speech, the keynote that he struck, that America is a confident leader of the free world, is the right one and I'm absolutely delighted at the way in which confidence had returned to the United States.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Interview for Business Week Magazine (11 February 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105836.
Second term as Prime Minister

“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.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Scottish Tories in 1999 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Did+they+REALLY+say+that%3F+AS+A+SHORTLIST+IS+COMPILED+OF+THE+YEAR%27S...-a0109790331
Post-Prime Ministerial

“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands and now we have to fight the enemy within, which is much more difficult but just as dangerous to liberty.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to 1922 Committee (19 July 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105563, quoted in John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 361.
Second term as Prime Minister

“People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. The hon. Gentleman is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That way one will never create the wealth for better social services. as we have. What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy.”

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Margaret Thatcher

From her last House of Commons speech (22 November 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108256; response to M.P. Simon Hughes
Third term as Prime Minister

“We suffered a tragedy not one of us could have thought would happen in our country. And we picked ourselves up and sorted ourselves out as all good British people do, and I thought, let us stand together for we are British! They were trying to destroy the fundamental freedom that is the birth-right of every British citizen, freedom, justice and democracy.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Finchley Conservatives (20 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105769 on the Brighton bombing
Second term as Prime Minister

“To many of us it seems that there is precious little difference between the policies of the Communist Party and the policies of the Labour Party.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Prime Minister's Questions (11 December 1980) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104460
First term as Prime Minister

“I fight on, I fight to win.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Remarks to journalists in Downing Street (21 November 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108252, following the inconclusive first ballot in the Conservative leadership election.
Third term as Prime Minister