Prime Minister's Questions (19 April 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105294. The use of 'frit', an unusual Lincolnshire dialect abbreviation of 'frightened' which Mrs Thatcher evidently recalled from childhood, was missed by MPs in a noisy chamber but heard very distinctly on the audio feed from the chamber.
First term as Prime Minister
“The hon. Gentleman, and other hon. Gentlemen, are pleased to designate me as the arch enemy of the farmers. Sir, I have as good a right as any hon. Gentleman in this House to identify myself with the order of farmers. I am a farmer's son. The hon. Member for Sussex has been speaking to you as the farmer's friend; I am the son of a Sussex farmer; my ancestors were all yeomen of the class who have been suffering under this system; my family suffered under it, and I have, therefore, as good or a better right than any of you to stand up as the farmer's friend, and to represent his wrongs in this House.”
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1843/feb/17/distress-of-the-country-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (17 February 1843).
1840s
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Richard Cobden 56
English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman 1804–1865Related quotes
“I am a servant to the farmers.”
In How a farmers’ servant painted the nation white, 9 September 2012, 31 Deccember 2013, The Hindu http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/columnsothers/how-a-farmers-servant-painted-the-nation-white/article1-927184.aspx,
Quote
We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all.
Speech on the Munich Agreement http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government (5 October 1938).
“I am a farmer singing at the plow”
Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow, first line of the poem (1934)
Speech http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199192/cmhansrd/1992-02-28/Debate-1.html in the House of Commons (28 February 1992)
1990s
… Move your amendments and let us get to business.
Speech in the House of Commons answering Conservative leader Arthur Balfour (12 March 1906), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 497
Prime Minister
Speech on Indian Constitutional Reform http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1933/mar/29/indian-constitutional-reform (29 March 1933).
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.
Reply to delegation from the National Union League approving and endorsing "the nominations made by the Union National Convention at Baltimore." New York Times, Herald, and Tribune (10 June 1864) Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;rgn=div1;view=text;idno=lincoln7;node=lincoln7%3A852
To a delegation of the National Union League who congratulated him on his nomination as the Republican candidate for President, June 9, 1864. As given by J. F. Rhodes—Hist. of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, Volume IV, p. 370. Same in Nicolay and Hay Lincoln's Complete Works, Volume II, p. 532. Different version in Appleton's Cyclopedia. Raymond—Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, Chapter XVIII, p. 500. (Ed. 1865) says Lincoln quotes an old Dutch farmer, "It was best not to swap horses when crossing a stream".
Variant: I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League, have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap. note
Source: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;rgn=div1;view=text;idno=lincoln7;node=lincoln7%3A852 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7