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Quotes by Margaret Thatcher


You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
– Margaret Thatcher
A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.
– Margaret Thatcher
Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.
– Margaret Thatcher
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
– Margaret Thatcher
Being prime minister is a lonely job... you cannot lead from the crowd.
– Margaret Thatcher
Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.
– Margaret Thatcher
Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and importance, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.
– Margaret Thatcher
Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism. St. Pierre To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.
– Margaret Thatcher
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
– Margaret Thatcher
I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.
– Margaret Thatcher
I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.
– Margaret Thatcher
I don't know what I would do without Whitelaw. Everyone should have a Willy.
– Margaret Thatcher
I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.
– Margaret Thatcher
I have made it quite clear that a unified Ireland was one solution that is out. A second solution was a confederation of two states. That is out. A third solution was joint authority. That is out-that is a derogation of sovereignty.
– Margaret Thatcher
I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.
– Margaret Thatcher
I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together.
– Margaret Thatcher
I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.
– Margaret Thatcher
I owe nothing to Women's Lib.
– Margaret Thatcher
I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.
– Margaret Thatcher
I shan't be pulling the levers there but I shall be a very good back-seat driver.
– Margaret Thatcher
I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.
– Margaret Thatcher
I'm not a good butcher but I've had to learn to carve the joint. People expect a new look.
– Margaret Thatcher
I've got a woman's ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.
– Margaret Thatcher
If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.
– Margaret Thatcher
If you go into what I call a bubble boom, every bubble bursts.
– Margaret Thatcher
If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.
– Margaret Thatcher
If you want to cut your own throat, don't come to me for a bandage.
– Margaret Thatcher
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.
– Margaret Thatcher
It is only when you look now and see success that you say that it was good fortune. It was not. We lost 250 of our best young men. I felt every one.
– Margaret Thatcher
It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
– Margaret Thatcher
It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.
– Margaret Thatcher
It was sheer professionalism and inspiration and the fact that you really cannot have people marching into other people's territory and staying there.
– Margaret Thatcher
It's a funny old world.
– Margaret Thatcher
Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.
– Margaret Thatcher
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions - he had money, too.
– Margaret Thatcher
No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary - not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn't want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.
– Margaret Thatcher
Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.
– Margaret Thatcher
Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.
– Margaret Thatcher
On my way here I passed a local cinema and it turned out you were expecting me after all, for the billboards read: The Mummy Returns.
– Margaret Thatcher
One hopes to achieve the zero option, but in the absence of that we must achieve balanced numbers.
– Margaret Thatcher
Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.
– Margaret Thatcher
Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.
– Margaret Thatcher
Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.
– Margaret Thatcher
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.
– Margaret Thatcher
Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a sense of purpose.
– Margaret Thatcher
The battle for women's rights has been largely won.
– Margaret Thatcher
There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it.
– Margaret Thatcher
There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.
– Margaret Thatcher
This lady is not for turning.
– Margaret Thatcher
To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.
– Margaret Thatcher
To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.
– Margaret Thatcher
Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mists of time like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past.
– Margaret Thatcher
We didn't have to do the minuets of diplomacy. We got down to business.
– Margaret Thatcher
We were told our campaign wasn't sufficiently slick. We regard that as a compliment.
– Margaret Thatcher
What Britain needs is an iron lady.
– Margaret Thatcher
Why do you climb philosophical hills? Because they are worth climbing. There are no hills to go down unless you start from the top.
– Margaret Thatcher
You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.
– Margaret Thatcher
[People constantly requesting government intervention] are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.
– Margaret Thatcher
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; its when you had everything to do, and you've done it.
– Margaret Thatcher
Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.
– Margaret Thatcher
You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure.
– Margaret Thatcher
To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan you should wear it inside, where it functions best.
– Margaret Thatcher
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.
– Margaret Thatcher
Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.
– Margaret Thatcher
One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.
– Margaret Thatcher
It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.
– Margaret Thatcher
If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
– Margaret Thatcher
I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
– Margaret Thatcher