Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Margaret Thatcher, fully Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts

British Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it."

"If it is once again one against forty-eight, then I am very sorry for the forty-eight."

"I, along with something like 5 million other people, insure to enable me to go into hospital on the day I want; at the time I want, and with a doctor I want."

"If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership - you are practicing followship."

"If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim."

"If you go into what I call a bubble boom, every bubble bursts."

"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."

"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing."

"If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing."

"If you want to cut your own throat, don't come to me for a bandage."

"If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman."

"If you set out to be liked, you will accomplish nothing."

"If... many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made."

"I'm back... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'."

"I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end."

"I'm not a good butcher but I've had to learn to carve the joint. People expect a new look."

"In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world."

"In my work, you get used to criticisms. Of course you do, because there are a lot of people trying to get you down, but I always cheer up immensely if one is particularly wounding because I think well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. That is why my father always taught me: never worry about anyone who attacks you personally; it means their arguments carry no weight and they know it."

"In a decision of the utmost gravity, Labor voted to give up Britain's independent nuclear deterrent unilaterally. Labor's defense policy ? though "defense" is scarcely the word?is an absolute break with the defense policy of every British Government since the Second World War. Let there be no doubt about the gravity of that decision. You cannot be a loyal member of NATO while disavowing its fundamental strategy. A Labor Britain would be a neutralist Britain. It would be the greatest gain for the Soviet Union in forty years. And they would have got it without firing a shot."

"Imagine a Labor canvasser talking on the doorstep to those East German families when they settle in, on freedom's side of the wall. "You want to keep more of the money you earn? I'm afraid that's very selfish. We shall want to tax that away. You want to own shares in your firm? We can't have that. The state has to own your firm. You want to choose where to send your children to school? That's very divisive. You'll send your child where we tell you."

"In considering our traditional ties with the Commonwealth we should remember that it now differs greatly from the entity which existed 20 or 30 years ago. Many of us do not feel quite the same allegiance to Archbishop Makarios or Doctor Nkrumah or to people like Jomo Kenyatta as we do towards Mr. Menzies of Australia."

"In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."

"It is a great night. It is the end of Socialism."

"It is a killing field of the like of which I thought we would never see in Europe again [and is] not worthy of Europe, not worthy of the west and not worthy of the United States... This is happening in the heart of Europe and we have not done more to stop it. It is in Europe's sphere of influence. It should be in Europe's sphere of conscience... We are little more than an accomplice to massacre."

"It is always important in matters of high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge."

"It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake."

"It may be inverted snobbishness but I don't want old style, Old Etonian Tories of the old school to succeed me and go back to the old complacent, consensus ways. John Major is someone who has fought his way up from the bottom and is far more in tune with the skilled and ambitious and worthwhile working classes than Douglas Hurd is."

"It seems like cloud cuckoo land... If anyone is suggesting that I would go to Parliament and suggest the abolition of the pound sterling ? no! ... We have made it quite clear that we will not have a single currency imposed on us."

"It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs."

"It used to be about trying to do something. Now it's about trying to be someone."

"It pays to know the enemy -- not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend."

"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."

"It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see."

"It will be years - and not in my time - before a woman will lead the party or become prime minister."

"It was sheer professionalism and inspiration and the fact that you really cannot have people marching into other people's territory and staying there."

"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."

"Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the marines. .. Rejoice."

"Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyze 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."

"Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay ? that ?someone else? is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers? money."

"Let our children grow tall and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so."

"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."

"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."

"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 when you?ve had everything to do and you?ve done it."

"Many of our troubles are due to the fact that our people turn to politicians for everything."

"Marxists get up early to further their cause. We must get up even earlier to defend our freedom."

"Mr. Chairman, you have invited me to speak on the subject of Britain and Europe. Perhaps I should congratulate you on your courage. If you believe some of the things said and written about my views on Europe, it must seem rather like inviting Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful coexistence! ...The European Community is one manifestation of that European identity, but it is not the only one. We must never forget that east of the Iron Curtain, peoples who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom and identity have been cut off from their roots. We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities...To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the center of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardize the objectives we seek to achieve. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality...it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the center, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the center, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels."

"My job is to stop Britain from going red."

"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."

"Never believe that technology alone will allow America to prevail as a superpower."

"My father, more perceptive than many, wryly commented that by the time I was an adult there might not be an Indian Civil Service to enter. He turned out to be right. I had to settle for British politics instead."