“I do not believe that history is writ clear and unchallengeable. It doesn't just happen. History is made by people: its movement depends on small currents as well as great tides, on ideas, perceptions, will and courage, the ability to sense a trend, the will to act on understanding and intuition. It is up to us to give intellectual content and political direction to these new dissatisfactions with socialism in practice, with its material and moral failures, we must convert disillusion into understanding. If we fail, the tide will be lost. But if it is taken, the last quarter of our century can initiate a new renaissance matching anything in our island's long and outstanding history.”

—  Margaret Thatcher

Speech to the Zurich Economic Society “The New Renaissance” (14 March 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103336
Leader of the Opposition

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Margaret Thatcher 348
British stateswoman and politician 1925–2013

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