Top 350 Margaret Thatcher Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “No generation has a free hold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy-with a full repairing lease.”

— Margaret Thatcher

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

— Margaret Thatcher

103. “It will be years – not in my time – before a woman will become Prime Minister.”

— Margaret Thatcher

104. “I’m either the witch or Lady Macbeth of English politics, but someone gotta wear the pants in England when others wearing kilts.”

— Margaret Thatcher

105. “There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.”

— Margaret Thatcher

106. “The application of collective guilt, running from one generation to another, is a dangerous doctrine which would leave few modern nations unscathed.”

— Margaret Thatcher

107. “The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.”

— Margaret Thatcher

108. “You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure.”

— Margaret Thatcher

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

— Margaret Thatcher

110. “When you stop a dictator, there are always risks. But there are greater risks in not stopping a dictator.”

— Margaret Thatcher

111. “We had to do what we had to do – Britain is great again.”

— Margaret Thatcher

112. “If your only opportunity is to be equal then it is not opportunity.”

— Margaret Thatcher

113. “Dictators can be deterred, they can be crushed-but they can never be appeased.”

— Margaret Thatcher

114. “I went to Oxford University – but I’ve never let that hold me back.”

— Margaret Thatcher

115. “Advisers advise, and ministers decide.”

— Margaret Thatcher

116. “Citizenship should be based on those who have a close and real relationship with this country and its inhabitants.”

— Margaret Thatcher

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

— Margaret Thatcher

118. “If you have a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, I believe people will follow you. Democracy isn’t just about deducing what the people want. Democracy is leading the people as well.”

— Margaret Thatcher

119. “Young people ought not to be idle, it is very bad for them.”

— Margaret Thatcher

120. “This business of the working class is on its way out I think. After all, aren’t I working class? I work jolly hard, I can tell you.”

— Margaret Thatcher

121. “There is a nonsense about intelligent women not being beautiful.”

— Margaret Thatcher

122. “I want a capital-earning democracy. Every man and woman a capitalist. Housing is the start. If you’re a man or woman of property, you’ve got something. So every man a capitalist, and every man a man of property.”

— Margaret Thatcher

123. “I’m not a good butcher but I’ve had to learn to carve the joint. People expect a new look.”

— Margaret Thatcher

124. “As prime minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly both before and after his presidency. And I have had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president.”

— Margaret Thatcher

125. “I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.”

— Margaret Thatcher

126. “Any leader has to have a certain amount of steel in them, so I am not that put out being called the Iron Lady.”

— Margaret Thatcher

127. “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

128. “America, my friends, is the only country in the world actually founded on liberty – the only one. People went to America to be free.”

— Margaret Thatcher

129. “Socialism is in no way a curate’s egg.”

— Margaret Thatcher

130. “To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.”

— Margaret Thatcher

131. “Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget – and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be.”

— Margaret Thatcher

132. “The first step in calculating which way to go is to find out where you are.”

— Margaret Thatcher

133. “Forget that I’m a woman. Forget the accusations that I am a Right Winger demanding privilege – I had precious little privilege in my early years.”

— Margaret Thatcher

134. “The Government wants a peaceful settlement. But we totally reject a peaceful sell-out.”

— Margaret Thatcher

135. “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.”

— Margaret Thatcher

136. “I shan’t be pulling the levers there but I shall be a very good back-seat driver.”

— Margaret Thatcher

137. “The Russians put guns before butter. We put just about everything before guns.”

— Margaret Thatcher

138. “First you win the argument, then you win the vote.”

— Margaret Thatcher

139. “People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.”

— Margaret Thatcher

140. “We speak of peace, yes, but whose peace? Poland’s? Bulgaria’s? The peace of the grave?”

— Margaret Thatcher

141. “Good Conservatives always pay their bills. And on time. Not like the Socialists who run up other people’s bills.”

— Margaret Thatcher

142. “Our judgement is that the presence of the Royal Marines garrison is sufficient deterrent against any possible aggression.”

— Margaret Thatcher

143. “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

144. “Life’s greatest reward is life itself.”

— Margaret Thatcher

145. “Rooster, maybe well crows, but the eggs still bears the chicken.”

— Margaret Thatcher

146. “To be free is better than to be unfree – always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.”

— Margaret Thatcher

147. “You can’t lead from the crowd.”

— Margaret Thatcher

148. “Everything a politician promises at election time has to be paid for either by higher taxation or by borrowing.”

— Margaret Thatcher

149. “Terrorism thrives on a free society. The terrorist uses the feelings in a free society to sap the will of civilization to resist. If the terrorist succeeds, he has won and the whole of free society has lost.”

— Margaret Thatcher

150. “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.”

— Margaret Thatcher