“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

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Margaret Thatcher 348

British stateswoman and politician 1925–2013

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“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.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

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

“It is generally acknowledged that the Government are running, in the Maze prison, one of the most liberal and humane prison regimes anywhere…What hunger strikers are asking for—the one who died last was in fact a murderer; let us not mince our words—is political status by easy stages. They cannot have it. They are murderers and people who use force and violence to obtain their ends. They have made perfectly clear what they want. They cannot and will not have it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Prime Minister's Questions (4 May 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104649 regarding the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
First term as Prime Minister

“It means "Ask the next question." Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created. This guy is sitting in a cave and he says, "Why can't man fly?"”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

Well, that's the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked.
The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We've found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it's technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that.

His explanation of the meaning of a small symbol he used when writing his signature, as quoted in an interview with David Duncan (with an image of his signature) http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/misc/duncan.html, sometime around 1980.

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

XI, 14
Confessions (c. 397)

“When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me.”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

Source: Complete Poems of Stephen Crane

“I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.”

Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)

Attributed to Cato in Plutarch, Parallel Lives 19:4 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0013%3Achapter%3D19.
Original Greek: ‘μᾶλλον γὰρ,’ ἔφη, ‘βούλομαι ζητεῖσθαι, διὰ τί μου ἀνδριὰς οὐ κεῖται ἢ διὰ τί κεῖται’