The Iron Lady of British politics, Margaret Thatcher was the longest continuously serving prime minister since 1827. Her conservative politics led to the implementation of such radical policies as the poll tax.
Selected Margaret Thatcher Quotations
• We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.
• Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.
• In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.
• Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.
• 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.
• It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
• 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.
• I owe nothing to Women's Lib.
• The battle for women's rights has been largely won.
• Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
• The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians.
• There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.
• As God once said, and I think rightly...
• If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
• I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.
• 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.
• If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.
• I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end.
• To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.
• Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.
• 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.
• U-turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.
• You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
• What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.
• 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.
