Home > Author > Margaret Thatcher
41 " No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well. "
― Margaret Thatcher
42 " There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditiionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe. "
― Margaret Thatcher , The Path to Power
43 " I am extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end.” - Margaret Thatcher "
44 " Do you know, one of the greatest problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas? Now, thoughts and ideas, that interests me. "
45 " I wasn't lucky, I deserved it. "
46 " The facts of life are conservative. "
47 " Any leader has to have a certain amount of steel in them, so I am not that put out being called the Iron Lady. "
48 " The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition, are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long. . . . There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves. "
49 " If you want something spoken about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman. "
50 " well it used to be about trying to do something, now it is about trying to be someone "
― Margaret Thatcher , Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography
51 " Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family, and the school. "
52 " Of course, to be a mother and a housewife is a vocation of a very high kind. But I simply felt that it was not the whole of my vocation. I knew that I also wanted a career. A phrase that Irene Ward, MP for Tynemouth, and I often used was that ‘while the home must always be the centre of one’s life, it should not be the boundary of one’s ambitions’. "
53 " The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns. "
54 " Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today's political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order - as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice. "
55 " Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag. "
56 " As Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990 I had the opportunity to put these convictions into effect in economic policy -We intended policy in the 1980s to be directed towards fundamentally different goals from those of most of the post-war ear. We believed that since jobs (in a free society) did not depend on government but upon satisfying customers, there was no point in setting targets for 'full' employment. Instead, government should create the right framework of sound money, low taxes, light regulation and flexible markets (including labour markets) to allow prosperity and employment to grow. "
57 " It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend. "
58 " They might have beaten us at our national sport, but we managed to beat them at their national sport twice in the 20th century. [Replying to Kenneth Clarke, who said, "Isn't it terrible about losing to the Germans at our national sport?" when England lost to Germany in the 1990 FIFA World Cup Semi-final.] "
59 " I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand 'I have a problem, it is the government's job to cope with it!' or 'I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!'; 'I am homeless, the government must house me!' and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society?"There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations. "
60 " I don't think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime. "