Top 350 Margaret Thatcher Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.”

— Margaret Thatcher

302. “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

303. “The patronage state is an arrogant state. It assumes it can spend your money better than you do. Yet it expects you to work for it in the first place.”

— Margaret Thatcher

304. “If you go into what I call a bubble boom, every bubble bursts.”

— Margaret Thatcher

305. “I am not immortal, but I’ve got a lot left in me yet.”

— Margaret Thatcher

306. “We Conservatives hate unemployment.”

— Margaret Thatcher

307. “The habit of ubiquitous interventionism, combining pinprick strikes by precision weapons with pious invocations of high principle, would lead us into endless difficulties. Interventions must be limited in number and overwhelming in their impact.”

— Margaret Thatcher

308. “The mission of this government is much more than the promotion of economic progress. It is to renew the spirit and solidarity of the nation.”

— Margaret Thatcher

309. “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

310. “The West as a whole in the early 1990s become obsessed with a ‘peace dividend’ that would be spent over and over again on any number of soft-hearted and sometimes soft-headed causes. Politicians forget that the only real peace dividend is peace.”

— Margaret Thatcher

311. “We intend freedom and justice to conquer. Yes, we do have a creed and we wish others to share it. But it is not part of our policy to impose our beliefs by force or threat of force.”

— Margaret Thatcher

312. “Obsolete weapons do not deter.”

— Margaret Thatcher

313. “I’ve got my teeth into him, and I’m not going to let go.”

— Margaret Thatcher

314. “I have very strong views about Europe. We’re quite the best country. We rescued them. We’re not going to get entangled with them. We’ve got to keep our own independence. Is that clear?”

— Margaret Thatcher

315. “Personal virtue is no substitute for political hard-headedness.”

— Margaret Thatcher

316. “We must not fall into the trap of projecting our own morality onto the Soviet leaders. They do not share our aspirations, they are not constrained by our ethics, they always consider themselves exempt from the rules that bind other states.”

— Margaret Thatcher

317. “I am not a compromiser on fundamentals.”

— Margaret Thatcher

318. “We introduced the Community Charge. I still call it that. I like the Poles – I never had any intention of taxing them.”

— Margaret Thatcher

319. “I can cope with nine of them, so they ought to be able to stand one of me. They could end the tiresomeness and stubbornness by giving me what I want.”

— Margaret Thatcher

320. “The Third World is very much like the First World – just poorer: what works for the West will work for the rest as well.”

— Margaret Thatcher

321. “As a motive for terror, religion has more often than not required a good deal of lubrication by lucre.”

— Margaret Thatcher

322. “I’m also very much aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile, you set up a constitution suitable for democracy, you put it into effect, elections were held, and then, in accordance with the result, you stepped down.”

— Margaret Thatcher

323. “Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.”

— Margaret Thatcher

324. “It is not the business of politicians to please everyone.”

— Margaret Thatcher

325. “Let’s make it clear: the Conservative Party has no plans for new NHS charges.”

— Margaret Thatcher

326. “The messages on our banners in 1979 – freedom, opportunity, family, enterprise, ownership – are now inscribed on the banners in Leipzig, Warsaw, Budapest and even Moscow.”

— Margaret Thatcher

327. “There are always dangers about. Therefore you must always keep your defences strong.”

— Margaret Thatcher

328. “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

329. “One hopes to achieve the zero option, but in the absence of that we must achieve balanced numbers.”

— Margaret Thatcher

330. “Political success is a good deal pleasanter than political failure, but it too brings its problems.”

— Margaret Thatcher

331. “I have the money and they won’t get their hands on it.”

— Margaret Thatcher

332. “We should see to it that our people are steeped in a real knowledge and understanding of our national culture.”

— Margaret Thatcher

333. “We need to create a mood where it is everywhere thought morally right for as many people as possible to acquire capital.”

— Margaret Thatcher

334. “I do not understand the unilateralists. If they hated nuclear weapons as much as I do they would want them down in the world as a whole. I am the true disarmer, I keep peace and freedom and justice with it.”

— Margaret Thatcher

335. “We must not fall into the mistake of thinking that it is America that trades with Taiwan or Europe that trades with Asia. The truth is that it is American companies that trade with Taiwanese companies.”

— Margaret Thatcher

336. “If you can’t afford it, you can’t have it.”

— Margaret Thatcher

337. “I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.”

— Margaret Thatcher

338. “Never in the history of human credit has so much been owed.”

— Margaret Thatcher

339. “Naturally, it is with some temerity that the pupil speaks before the master, because you know more about the Common Market than anybody.”

— Margaret Thatcher

340. “Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.”

— Margaret Thatcher

341. “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

342. “We simply cannot delegate the exercise of mercy and generosity to others.”

— Margaret Thatcher

343. “I owe a great deal to the church for everything in which I believe. I am very glad that I was brought up strictly. I was a very serious child. There was not a lot of fun and sparkle in my life.”

— Margaret Thatcher

344. “We went back on a very similar manifesto to things I believe in. The difference is that after eighteen months to two years he did the biggest U-turn on policy of all time and started to go the wrong way. In the end, that cost us the next election.”

— Margaret Thatcher

345. “You will only succeed if you know that what you are doing is right and you know how to bring out the best in people.”

— Margaret Thatcher

346. “Reagan did not suffer from the dismal plague of doubts which has assailed so many politicians in our times and which has rendered them incapable of clear decisions.”

— Margaret Thatcher

347. “I would not wish to be Prime Minister, dear.”

— Margaret Thatcher

348. “Their pitiless ideology only survives because it is maintained by force. But the day comes when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it. Then the edifice cracks: the mortar crumbles.”

— Margaret Thatcher

349. “There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditiionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe.”

— Margaret Thatcher

350. “Bribing regimes to comply with requirements which they should have acknowledged in the first place is not a process that appeals to me.”

— Margaret Thatcher