Margaret Thatcher citations (354 citations, Page 7)

Margaret Thatcher: 354 citations 0 J'aime

Margaret Thatcher citations célèbres

“Notre politique n'est pas fondée sur la jalousie ou sur la haine, mais sur la liberté individuelle de l'homme ou de la femme. Nous ne voulons pas interdire le succès et la réussite, nous voulons encourager le dynamisme et l'initiative. En 1940, ce n'est pas l'appel à la nationalisation qui a poussé notre pays à combattre le totalitarisme, c'est l'appel de la liberté.”

Margaret Thatcher

Discours prononcé initialement en 1950 à Dartford
Les chemins du pouvoir, Mémoires II, 1995

“La grande réforme politique du siècle dernier a consisté à accorder le droit de vote à un nombre toujours accru de citoyens. Désormais la grande réforme politique de ce siècle voulue par les Tories consiste à permettre l'accès à la propriété à un nombre toujours accru de ces mêmes citoyens.”

Margaret Thatcher

français
Discours de Bornemouth, 10 octobre 1986

“Je n'ai jamais oublié que l'objectif inavoué du socialisme – municipal ou national – était d'accroître la dépendance. La pauvreté n'était pas seulement le sol nourricier du socialisme : elle en était l'effet délibérément recherché.”

Margaret Thatcher

10 Downing Street, Mémoires, 1993

“La dame n'aime pas renoncer”

Margaret Thatcher

The lady is not for turning
Propos tenus dans un discours devant le Conseil central de son parti, en octobre 1980
10 Downing Street, Mémoires, 1993

“Le socialisme a l'État pour credo. Il considère les êtres humains ordinaires comme le matériau brut de ses projets de changements sociaux.”

Margaret Thatcher

Propos tenus dans un discours devant le Conseil central de son parti, en mars 1990
10 Downing Street, Mémoires, 1993

“Le capitalisme populaire n'est rien d'autre qu'une croisade destinée à permettre au plus grand nombre de participer de plein droit à la vie économique de la nation.”

Margaret Thatcher

français
Discours de Bornemouth, 10 octobre 1986

Margaret Thatcher: Citations en anglais

“I think it is a great day for freedom. I watched the scenes on television last night and again this morning because I felt one ought not only hear about them but see them because you see the joy on people's faces and you see what freedom means to them; it makes you realise that you cannot stifle or suppress people's desire for liberty and so I watched with the same joy as everyone else and I hope that they will be a prelude to the Berlin Wall coming down.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Remarks on the Berlin Wall (10 November 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107819
Third term as Prime Minister

“People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103443
Leader of the Opposition

“When you stop selecting by ability you have to select according to some other inevitably less satisfactory criterion.”

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Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

“There is nothing new or unusual about the Tory commitment to protect the environment. The last thing we want is to leave environmental debts for our children to clear up…It's we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the Earth—we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come. The core of Tory philosophy and for the case for protecting the environment are the same. No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease. This Government intends to meet the terms of that lease in full.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107352
Third term as Prime Minister

“Madame Chairman, I presume this is to sweep Britain clean of socialism”

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Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher, at a Tory party conference, holding a brush. (date unknown)
Leader of the Opposition

“I don't think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.”

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Margaret Thatcher

On Val meets the V.I.P.s, BBC Television (5 March 1973) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=101992
Education Secretary

“No, I'm not a feminist… I think they've become too strident. I think they have done great damage to the cause of women by making us out to be something we are not. Each person is different. Each has their own talents and abilities, and these are the things you want to draw and bring out. You don't say: “I must get on because I'm a woman, or that I must get on because I'm a man”. You should say that you should get on because you have the combination of talents which are right for the job. The moment you exaggerate the question, you defeat your case.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Interview for Hornsey Journal (21 April 1978) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103662
Leader of the Opposition

“But freedom without law is freedom only for the strong at the expense of the weak. Freedom without law is therefore no freedom, but rather anarchy or tyranny. Law is the bond of all civil society. We are not asking a favour of a man when we ask him to obey the law. Obedience of the rule of law is necessary for the continuance of liberty itself. Doubtless you will point out that laws have not always been just—indeed they have been very unjust. In South Africa that certainly has been the case. Thankfully, that is now being remedied. And alongside that, democracy has yet to be achieved.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech in South Africa (20 May 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108268
Post-Prime Ministerial

“The right hon. Gentleman [Neil Kinnock] leads a party which claims to support democracy but repudiates those miners who have voted democratically to remain at work and have done so in accordance with their union procedures. He leads a party which condemns violence in general but supports the mass picketing which inevitably ends in violence. He leads a party which has allied itself to the wreckers against the workers. The forces to which the right hon. Gentleman has lent his voice and support have no more love for parliamentary democracy than for the jobs and homes of those who oppose them. Sooner or later, when he has ceased to be of value to their purpose, they will turn on him, just as surely as they have turned on the police, on the steel workers, and on working miners and their families. There is only one word to describe the policy of the right hon. Gentleman when faced with threats, whether from home or abroad, and that word is appeasement. He will live to regret it. It is no policy for Britain.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech in the House of Commons (31 July 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105732 on the Labour Party and the Miners' Strike
Second term as Prime Minister

“What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.”

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Margaret Thatcher livre Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 327

“It would seem that dead hunger strikers, who have extinguished their own lives, are of more use to PIRA than living members. Such is their calculated cynicism. This Government is not prepared to legitimise their cause by word or by deed. And we should be clear what that cause is. It is a dictatorship by force and by fear in Northern Ireland, and in the Republic. These men deny democracy everywhere; they seek power for themselves. Some people argue that the Government could make the problem go away. We can of course maintain and improve an already humane prison regime. But there is no point in pretending that this is what the PIRA want. They have remained inflexible and intransigent in the face of all that we have done because what they want is special treatment, treatment different from that received by other prisoners. They want their violence justified. It isn't, and it will not be.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech at Stormont Castle (28 May 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104657 regarding the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
First term as Prime Minister

“We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag. We fought with the support of so many throughout the world: the Security Council, the Commonwealth, the European Community, and the United States. Yet we also fought alone – for we fought for our own sovereign territory.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Rally at Cheltenham (3 July 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104989, regarding the Falkland Islands War.
First term as Prime Minister

“Patched-up diplomatic solutions designed to answer the needs of the moment rarely last, and as they unravel they can actually make things worse.”

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Margaret Thatcher livre Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 203

“Let me make one point about the hunger strike in the Maze prison. I want this to be utterly clear. There can be no political justification for murder or any other crime. The Government will never concede political status to the hunger strikers, or to any others convicted of criminal offences in the Province.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech in the House of Commons (20 November 1980) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104446 regarding the Irish hunger strike
First term as Prime Minister

“The West as a whole in the early 1990s became obsessed with a 'peace dividend' that would be spent over and over again on any number of soft-hearted and sometimes soft-headed causes. Politicians forgot that the only real peace dividend is peace.”

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Margaret Thatcher livre Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 40

“We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the American Bar Association (15 July 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106096.
See Linda Smith for an amusing variant.
Second term as Prime Minister

“We will not take money in taxes from those who work hard and pay it out to those who don't. We are trying to roll back the tide of Socialism. We must get ‘stuck in’ and sort out our problems in our traditional British way instead of asking the Government to intervene every time. Intervening means taking from people who work jolly hard and just manage to live within their means and make a profit, money in extra tax to pay for those who don't.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Finchley Conservatives ("We are trying to roll back the tide of Socialism") (26 January 1980) https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104297
First term as Prime Minister

“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.”

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Margaret Thatcher

TV Interview for Channel 4 A plus 4 (15 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105764
Second term as Prime Minister

“We've beaten the Germans twice and now they're back!”

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Margaret Thatcher

She reportedly said on Germany's reunification, during EC-summit in December 1989, according to Chancellor Helmut Kohl in his memoris "Erinnerungen 1982-1990" published in 2005; as reported in "Thatcher's foot stamping fury, by Kohl" The Telegraph (3 November 2005) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/03/wkohl03.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/03/ixworld.html
Third term as Prime Minister

“Iraq has violated and taken over the territory of a country which is a full member of the United Nations. That is totally unacceptable and if it were allowed to endure then there would be many other small countries that could never feel safe…The fundamental question is this: whether the nations of the world have the collective will effectively to see that Security Council Resolution is upheld, whether they have the collective will effectively to do anything which the Security Council further agrees to see that Iraq withdraws and that the government of Kuwait is restored to Kuwait.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Joint Press Conference with President Bush (2 August 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108170
Third term as Prime Minister

“The point of having nuclear weapons is to deter a war of any kind. They have succeeded in doing so for the past 37 years. To be an effective deterrent a potential aggressor must believe that under certain circumstances such weapons will be used.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Prime Minister's Questions (1 February 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105246
First term as Prime Minister

“At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist gangs within our borders, and the terrorist states which finance and arm them. At the other are the Hard Left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the law.”

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Margaret Thatcher

The Second Carlton Lecture (26 November 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105799
Second term as Prime Minister

“If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Article for Daily Telegraph ("My Kind of Tory Party") (30 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102600
Shadow Secretary for Environment

“The main contribution one can make as a student to one's country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively.”

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Margaret Thatcher

The Path To Power (1995)

“I believe that the royal family are a focus of patriotism, of loyalty, of affection and of esteem. That is a rare combination, and we should value it highly.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Statement in the House of Commons (24 July 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108162
Third term as Prime Minister

“Let me give you my vision. A man's right to work as he will to spend what he earns to own property to have the State as servant and not as master these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102777
Leader of the Opposition

“(The Community Charge is) the flagship of the Thatcher fleet.”

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Margaret Thatcher

David Butler, Andrew Adonis and Tony Travers, "Failure in British government: the politics of the poll tax" (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994)
Remarks to Conservative backbench MPs, July 1987
Third term as Prime Minister

“Don't be scared of the high language of economists and Cabinet ministers, but think of politics at our own household level. After all, women live in contact with food supplies, housing shortages, and the ever-decreasing opportunities for children, and we must therefore face up to the position, remembering that as more power is taken away from the people, so there is less responsibility for us to assume.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Bexley Conservative Women (15 September 1949) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/100836
1940s

“I have made it quite clear – and so did Mr Prior when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – that a unified Ireland was one solution. That is out. A second solution was confederation of two states. That is out. A third solution was joint authority. That is out. That is a derogation from sovereignty.”

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Margaret Thatcher

Press conference after an Anglo-Irish summit (19 November 1984) http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/pmo/mt191184.htm. "Mr Prior" is James Prior.
Second term as Prime Minister