Top 100 Thatcher's Quotes
#1. When I'm out of politics I'm going to run a business, it'll be called rent-a-spine
Margaret Thatcher
#2. During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.
Margaret Thatcher
#3. Remember how Margaret Thatcher came to believe that abroad was more important than at home? Didn't do her much good.
Simon Hoggart
#6. I think my parents knew before I did that I was going to be an actress, because I was doing impressions of Margaret Thatcher at the age of four.
Michelle Dockery
#8. Good Conservatives always pay their bills. And on time. Not like the Socialists who run up other people's bills.
Margaret Thatcher
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. John Redwood is a young man but, let's face it, so was Margaret Thatcher in 1975.
Edward Leigh
#12. The moral was, in time of anarchy, tough leadership is the only solution - even though the collateral damage may be heartbreaking. Mrs. Thatcher's strident, take-no prisoners approach was in some ways repugnant, but it was surely necessary.
Nigel Hamilton
#14. Reality hasn't really intervened in my mother's life since the seventies.
Carol Thatcher
#16. We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral.
Margaret Thatcher
#17. About Thatcher's death: Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out on competetive tender and accept the cheapest bid. That's what she would have wanted.
Ken Loach
#18. When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.
Jimmy Reid
#19. Beneficiaries of the welfare states whose institutions they call into question, they are all Thatcher's children: politicians who have overseen a retreat from the ambitions of their predecessors.
Tony Judt
#20. I love his music because he was my generation. But then again, Elvis is everyone's generation, and he always will be.
Margaret Thatcher
#21. Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world's population and defending it for most of the rest.
Margaret Thatcher
#22. I became an insomniac, really, hardly slept at all, didn't even try to. And it's carried on. I hate to say I only need as much sleep as Mrs. Thatcher, but I can cope really well on five hours.
Sue Townsend
#23. Paddy Ashdown is the only party leader who's a trained killer. Although, to be fair, Mrs Thatcher was self taught.
Charles Kennedy
#24. Part of my dogsbody job during the 1983 election was choosing Mum's missile-proof clothes. They had to be disposable.
Carol Thatcher
#25. Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations ... I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher ... We've got it all.
Barack Obama
#26. Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them.
Margaret Thatcher
#27. All the general propositions favouring freedom I had .. imbibed at my father's knee or acquired by candle-end reading of Burke and Hayek ...
Margaret Thatcher
#29. I couldn't live without work. That's what makes me so sympathetic towards those people who are unemployed. I don't know how they live without working.
Margaret Thatcher
#30. They didn't even like Margaret Thatcher but at least there was Margaret Thatcher. There have been women, you know, Sonia Gandhi for heaven's sakes in India.
Kate Clinton
#31. there are deep stubborn veins of nostalgia for the 1950s (even among people my age; in much of Ireland the fifties didn't end until 1995, when we skipped straight to Thatcher's eighties),
Tana French
#32. Alas, yes. Unfortunately our little canary has gone Section 2 on us. He's absolutely Upney;* halfway to Dagenham, in fact. We're keeping him here because he's not deemed a hazard to himself, but so far he's confessed to assassinating Margaret Thatcher -
Charles Stross
#33. In those days one advantage of being a woman was that there was a basic courtesy towards us on which we could draw - something which today's feminists have largely dissipated.
Margaret Thatcher
#34. [On George H.W. Bush:] By 1990 I had learned that I had to defer to him in conversation and not to stint the praise. If that was what was necessary to secure Britain's interests and influence, I had no hesitation in eating a little humble pie.
Margaret Thatcher
#36. Being the only girl in the world who can say that her mother was Britain's first woman Prime Minister is honour enough for me.
Carol Thatcher
#37. Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it.
Morrissey
#38. Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.
Margaret Thatcher
#39. While the Soviet Union has imposed its rule on its neighbours and drawn an iron curtain between east and west, we in Great Britain have given freedom and independence to more than forty-eight countries whose populations now number more than a thousand million - a quarter of the world's total.
Margaret Thatcher
#40. I don't know what reception I'm at, but for God's sake give me a gin and tonic.
Denis Thatcher
#41. We are very fortunate to have someone else's weapons stationed on our soil, to fight those targeted on us.
Margaret Thatcher
#42. The Nuremburg trials were attacked at the time as 'victor's justice'. And this is precisely what they were - and were intended to be.
Margaret Thatcher
#43. I don't think any woman in power really has a happy life unless she's got a large number of women friends ... because you sometimes must go and sit down and let down your hair with someone you can trust totally.
Margaret Thatcher
#44. There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people's lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth.
Margaret Thatcher
#46. It's okay, Chancellor, you can touch them. Sometimes I just strip down to a tank top and stare at these guns in front of a mirror all day long.
Margaret Thatcher
#47. But if Saddam had been in a position credibly to threaten America or any of its allies - or the coalition's forces - with attack by missiles with nuclear warheads, would we have gone to the Gulf at all?
Margaret Thatcher
#48. The battle for women's rights has largely been won. The days when they were demanded and discussed in strident tones should be gone forever. I hate those strident tones we hear from some Women's Libbers.
Margaret Thatcher
#49. What's your name?"
"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."
"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?"
"Yes
Mark Twain
#50. Margaret Thatcher said,you know the problem with socialism is that eventually it will run out of other people's money. And she was absolutely right.
Jedediah Bila
#51. Well, there's a lot to react against![in response to the accusation that she was a reactionary]
Margaret Thatcher
#52. Margaret Thatcher's government redistributed money from rich to poor. And that's the nature of a modern western democracy.
George Osborne
#53. I was turned out because I said to Europe no, no, no. That no, no , no has now turned into yes, yes. Two yes's not three because he got the Social Chapter out and he's reserved his position on the single currency.
Margaret Thatcher
#54. Had I faltered we would have neither the success nor the international reputation we have. Yet when a woman is strong she is strident. If a man is strong, he's a good guy.
Margaret Thatcher
#55. 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
#57. 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
#58. Yet the basic fact remains: every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book's words), regulation should not "be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly"
Margaret Thatcher
#60. Her iron will won international respect. Her unabashed femininity gained women's. Margaret Thatcher was a lady's lady.
Louise Burfitt-Dons
#61. Margaret Thatcher was a great leader for her nation at a pivotal and a perilous time. So, I find the comparison flattering, but that's up to others to say whether that comparison is justified.
Carly Fiorina
#62. The Establishment decided Thatcher's ideas were safer with a strong Blair government than with a weak Major government. We are given all these personalities to choose between to disguise the fact that the policies are the same.
Tony Benn
#63. The Iraqis had paid a terrible price for Saddam's folly (in the Gulf War). But looking at the devastation they left behind (in Kuwait), my sympathy was limited.
Margaret Thatcher
#64. Misgovernment ... will often be reflected in oppressive or aggressive policies towards groups within the state or towards the state's neighbours.
Margaret Thatcher
#65. The woman's mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its activities.
Margaret Thatcher
#66. [On Ronald Reagan:] Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears.
Margaret Thatcher
#67. Socialists are happy until they run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher
#68. Socialism and communism fall of their own weight because, as Margaret Thatcher said, you run out of other people's money. Because socialized medicine never falls of its own weight because you put people on lists, and they die waiting to get the treatment and care. So you don't go broke.
Louie Gohmert
#69. I had to live and breathe Margaret Thatcher for a few months. I totally engulfed myself in her life. I read her autobiography and a biography, 'The Grocer's Daughter.'
Alexandra Roach
#70. God, what a depressing day that was and what an irony that Britain's first female prime minister had to be Margaret Thatcher. She was the woman who asked, 'What has feminism ever done for me?' Well, dear, if you need to ask that question then you're obviously not very bright
Jo Brand
#71. that's like Vlad the Impaler calling Maggie Thatcher a bit insensitive.
David Mitchell
#72. I often compare Margaret Thatcher with Florence Nightingale. She stalks through the wards of our hospitals as a lady with a lamp. Unfortunately, it's a blowlamp.
Denis Healey
#73. I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right.
Tony Blair
#74. It is in a country's interests to keep faith with its allies. States in this sense are like people. If you have a reputation for exacting favors and not returning them, the favours dry up.
Margaret Thatcher
#75. To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only this to say, 'You turn if you want; the lady's not for turning.
Margaret Thatcher
#76. I certainly wasn't a fan of Thatcher's politics. People liked to label us as children of Thatcher. What nonsense. The real children of Thatcher came in the 1990s, and had no interest in politics. The Oasis, Britpop scene.
Gary Kemp
#77. Let me give you my vision: A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend.
Margaret Thatcher
#78. We stand up and proudly proclaim that Washington is not our caretaker and we reject a state, in Margaret Thatcher's words, a state that takes too much from us to do too much for us.
Rick Perry
#79. When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands.
Margaret Thatcher
#80. We speak of peace, yes, but whose peace? Poland's? Bulgaria's? The peace of the grave?
Margaret Thatcher
#81. A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country's flag.
Margaret Thatcher
#82. The virtues prized in free countries are honesty, self-discipline, a sense of responsibility to one's family, a sense of loyalty to one's employer and staff, and a pride in the quality of one's work. And these virtues only flourish in a climate of freedom.
Margaret Thatcher
#83. Let's make it clear: the Conservative Party has no plans for new NHS charges.
Margaret Thatcher
#84. The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher
#85. The women's movement in England was totally against Margaret Thatcher.
Gloria Steinem
#86. The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher
#87. The election of a man committed to the cause of freedom and the renewal of America's strength has given encouragement to all those who love liberty.
Margaret Thatcher
#89. When it comes to saving England, Maggy is Ball's Deep
Denis Thatcher
#90. For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions.
Margaret Thatcher
#91. Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.
Margaret Thatcher
#92. I think it's essential for comic writers to have a hate figure, a despot, a regime to react against, and I think Thatcher was perfect for me, I loathed everything she stood for.
Sue Townsend
#93. Under a Labour government, there's virtually nowhere you can put your savings where they would be safe from the state ... If you put money in a sock they'd probably nationalize socks.
Margaret Thatcher
#94. I do not believe it is in the character of the British people to begrudge the lion's share to those who have genuinely played the lion's part. They are ready to recognise that those who create the wealth - and I mean not only material but intellectual wealth - enrich the whole nation.
Margaret Thatcher
#95. It used to be about trying to do something. Now it's about trying to be someone.
Margaret Thatcher
#96. I want to be America's Margaret Thatcher. I will be the next Iron Lady.
Michele Bachmann
#97. My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.
Margaret Thatcher
#98. that's like Herod calling Thatcher a bit insensitive
David Mitchell
#100. Then she said, with mock horror, "She's going to bring some of her old wigs, if you can believe it." She rubbed her bare head with her free hand. "I'll look like a zombie Margaret Thatcher.
Patrick Ness
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