
The Daily Telegraph (14 September 1980), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 631, p. 840.
1980s
Speech in Catterick, Yorkshire (29 May 1975), quoted in The Times (30 May 1975), p. 4
Post-Prime Ministerial
The Daily Telegraph (14 September 1980), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 631, p. 840.
1980s
Podcast (25 August 2006)
The Bruges Speech (20 September 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107332
Third term as Prime Minister
Context: Mr. Chairman, you have invited me to speak on the subject of Britain and Europe. Perhaps I should congratulate you on your courage. If you believe some of the things said and written about my views on Europe, it must seem rather like inviting Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful coexistence!... The European Community is one manifestation of that European identity, but it is not the only one. We must never forget that east of the Iron Curtain, peoples who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom and identity have been cut off from their roots. We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities... To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardise the objectives we seek to achieve. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality... it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
Press Conference after Dublin European Council (30 November 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104180 when she was trying to renegotiate Britain's EEC budget contribution at the EEC Summit in Dublin. Often quoted as "I want my money back".
First term as Prime Minister
1860s, Speech in Austin (1860)
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Morecambe (1 October 1952), quoted in The Times (2 October 1952), p. 2
Backbench MP
“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.”
Widely attributed to Shaw begin31 (187ning in the 1940s, esp. after appearing in the November 1942 Reader’s Digest, the quotation is actually a variant of "Indeed, in many respects, she [Mrs. Otis] was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language" from Oscar Wilde's 1887 short story "The Canterville Ghost".
Misattributed
Variant: The English and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language.