Top 350 Margaret Thatcher Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “We were told our campaign wasn’t sufficiently slick. We regard that as a compliment.”

— Margaret Thatcher

152. “I am an undiluted admirer of American values and the American dream and I believe they will continue to inspire not just the people of the United States but millions across the face of the globe.”

— Margaret Thatcher

153. “I exercise my right as a free citizen to spend my own money in my own way, so that I can go on the day, the time, to the doctor I choose and get out fast.”

— Margaret Thatcher

154. “Freedom under the law must never be taken for granted.”

— Margaret Thatcher

155. “I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.”

— Margaret Thatcher

156. “When you hold back the successful, you penalize those who need help.”

— Margaret Thatcher

157. “I will not change just to court popularity.”

— Margaret Thatcher

158. “What is right for the family is right for Britain.”

— Margaret Thatcher

159. “I applaud strong government, but not overweening government sustained by cronies, ciphers and a personality cult.”

— Margaret Thatcher

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

— Margaret Thatcher

161. “I don’t know what I would do without Whitelaw. Everyone should have a Willy.”

— Margaret Thatcher

162. “A quick cure is a quack cure.”

— Margaret Thatcher

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

— Margaret Thatcher

164. “There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.”

— Margaret Thatcher

165. “The lesson is clear. Inflation devalues us all.”

— Margaret Thatcher

166. “Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.”

— Margaret Thatcher

167. “The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians.”

— Margaret Thatcher

168. “If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership – you are practicing followership.”

— Margaret Thatcher

169. “Consensus is the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects. – Margaret Thatcher.”

— Margaret Thatcher

170. “I am not hard – I’m frightfully soft. But I will not be hounded.”

— Margaret Thatcher

171. “I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.”

— Margaret Thatcher

172. “Wars are not caused by the buildup of weapons. They are caused when an aggressor believes he can achieve his objectives at an acceptable price.”

— Margaret Thatcher

173. “There might be new technology, but technological progress itself was nothing new – and over the years it had not destroyed jobs, but created them.”

— Margaret Thatcher

174. “Occupied Falklands are the thorn in my balls.”

— Margaret Thatcher

175. “There is nothing inevitable about rising unemployment.”

— Margaret Thatcher

176. “You cannot make an omelet without breaking some balls.”

— Margaret Thatcher

177. “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

178. “I don’t think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime.”

— Margaret Thatcher

179. “New technology is the true friend of full employment; the indispensable ally of progress; and the surest guarantee of prosperity.”

— Margaret Thatcher

180. “Israel must never be expected to jeopardize her security: if she was ever foolish enough to do so, and then suffered for it, the backlash against both honest brokers and Palestinians would be immense – ‘land for peace’ must also bring peace.”

— Margaret Thatcher

181. “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 upon us.”

— Margaret Thatcher

182. “If a woman like Eva Peron with no ideals can get that far, think how far I can go with the ideals that I have.”

— Margaret Thatcher

183. “Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.”

— Margaret Thatcher

184. “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

185. “The desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom.”

— Margaret Thatcher

186. “We have become a grandmother.”

— Margaret Thatcher

187. “I want to get totally rid of class distinction. As someone put it one of the papers this morning: Marks and Spencer have triumphed over Karl Marx and Engels.”

— Margaret Thatcher

188. “It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don’t want another one.”

— Margaret Thatcher

189. “There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.”

— Margaret Thatcher

190. “I am not a consensus politician. Im a conviction politician.”

— Margaret Thatcher

191. “Let us, then, draw together in the name, not of jingoism, but of justice.”

— Margaret Thatcher

192. “Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.”

— Margaret Thatcher

193. “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

194. “If someone is confronting our essential liberties, if someone is inflicting injuries and harm, by God I’ll confront them!”

— Margaret Thatcher

195. “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

196. “Do you think you would ever have heard of Christianity if the Apostles had gone out and said, ‘I believe in consensus?’”

— Margaret Thatcher

197. “What Britain needs is an iron lady.”

— Margaret Thatcher

198. “I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t.”

— Margaret Thatcher

199. “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

200. “Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.”

— Margaret Thatcher