Baroness Thatcher - 80 Years old.

Baroness Thatcher - 80 Years old.

Some classic quotes from the Iron Lady

Taken from another forum:

”Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

”Being prime minister is a lonely job... you cannot lead from the crowd. “

”I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”

”I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near. “

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

”I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say. “

”I owe nothing to Women's Lib. “

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

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

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

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

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

” Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world's population and defending it for most of the rest.”

“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.”

”No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions - he had money, too. “

”Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus. “

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

”Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides. “

”There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it. “

“The accumulation of wealth is a process which is of itself morally neutral. True, as Christianity teaches, riches bring temptations. But then so does poverty”

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

“With all due respect to the drafters of the American Declaration of Independence, all men (and women) are not created equal, at least in regard to their characters, abilities and aptitudes. And if they were, their family and cultural backgrounds - not to mention the effect of mere chance - would soon change that. On one thing, nature and nurture agree: we are all different. If this is unjust, then life is unjust. But, though one hears this expression - usually in the form of the complaint that 'life is unfair' - it really means nothing. In the same vein, someone once said to Voltaire, 'Life is hard.' To which is replied: 'Compared with what?'”

” I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”

“During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.”

(On The European Union) "What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.”

“The European single currency is bound to fail, economically, politically and indeed socially, though the timing, occasion and full consequences are all necessarily still unclear.”

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

“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.”

“Yet the basic fact remains: every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book's words), regulation should not 'be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly'”

“The right-of-centre parties still often compete with left-of-centre ones to proclaim their attachment to all the main programmes of spending, particularly spending on social services of one kind or another. But this foolish as well as muddled. It is foolish because left-of-centre parties will always be able to outbid right-of-centre ones in this auction - after all, that is why they are on the left in the first place. The muddle arises because once we concede that public spending and taxation are more than a necessary evil we have lost sight of the core values of freedom.”

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

“When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty.”

“In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.”

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

”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. “

”To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best. “

“Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited”

”Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mists of time like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past. “

”What Britain needs is an iron lady. “

god knows what she thinks of political correctness with quotes like that

She totally screwed my city up whilst she was in power but I think it was for the right reasons. The UK seems like a pretty sweet place to live these days and I think that is 70%+ down to what she did, even if it was very painful at the time.

I respect her more than any other politician of my lifetime.