No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%. Margaret Thatcher, cited Sunday Telegraph 26th October 1969
Now, that brings me to the Liberal Party. I gather that during the last few days there have been some ill-natured jokes about their new symbol, a bird of some kind, adopted by the Liberal Democrats at Blackpool. Politics is a serious business, and one should not lower the tone unduly. So I will say only this of the Liberal Democrat symbol and of the party it symbolises. This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. And now for something completely different. Margaret Thatcher, speech conference October 1990
Our country found its soul. Margaret Thatcher
Pennies don’t fall from heaven. They have to be earned on Earth. Margaret Thatcher, Observer 18th November 1979
People are rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people of a different culture. Margaret Thatcher, televised interview
The Community Charge will make local councils far more accountable to all their voters. Margaret Thatcher
The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations. Margaret Thatcher
The National Health Service is safe in our hands. Margaret Thatcher
The prime minister should be intimidating – there’s not much point in being a weak floppy thing in the chair, is there? Margaret Thatcher
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money. Margaret Thatcher
The proposals represent the most far-reaching reform of the National Health Service in its forty-year history. They offer new opportunities and pose new challenges for everyone concerned with the running of the service. Margaret Thatcher
There is no such thing as society. Margaret Thatcher
These few men are the wreckers in our midst. Margaret Thatcher
The situation of our country grows daily, indeed almost hourly, worse. Under Labour the Land of Hope of Glory has become the Land of Beg and Borrow. Margaret Thatcher
The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build. Margaret Thatcher
The violence and intimidation we have seen should never have happened. It is the work of extremists. It is the enemy within. Margaret Thatcher
We faced them squarely and we were determined to overcome. That is increasingly the mood of Britain. Now once again Britain is not prepared to be pushed around. We have ceased to be a nation in retreat. Margaret Thatcher, speech Cheltenham race course
We have been ruled by men who live by illusion. The illusion that you can have freedom by government decree. Margaret Thatcher
We have set in hand the sale of council houses and flats. Margaret Thatcher
We have to see that the spirit of the South Atlantic – the real spirit of Britain – is kindled not only by war but can now be fired by peace. We have the first prerequisite. We know that we can do it – we haven’t lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor. Margaret Thatcher
We’ll bring in a society that lives within its means. Where public expenditure is cut. And where waste of taxpayers’ money is ruthlessly expunged. Yes we’ll bring in a conservative society. Margaret Thatcher
You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning. Margaret Thatcher, speech Conservative Party Conference
What does she want, this housewife? My balls on a tray? Jacques Chirac, then Prime minister of France
She behaves with all the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa constrictor. Tony Banks, The Independent October 1997
Nobody can buy their way into a Bilderberg meeting, although many corporations have tried. Then they decide who to invite – who seems to be a ‘Bilderberg person’. The notion of a Bilderberg person hasn’t changed since the earliest days, back in 1954, when the group was created by Denis Healey, Joseph Retinger, David Rockefeller and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (a former SS officer while he was a student – ironic that a former Nazi, albeit a low-ranking and half-hearted one, would help give birth to an organisation that so many would consider to be evidence of a Jewish conspiracy).
‘First off,’ said a steering committee member to me, ‘the invited guests must sing for their supper. They can’t just sit there like church mice. They are there to speak. I remember when I invited Margaret Thatcher back in ’75. She wasn’t worldly. Well, she sat there for the first two days and didn’t say a thing. People started grumbling. A senator came up to me on the Friday night, Senator Mathias of Maryland. He said, ‘This lady you invited, she hasn’t said a word. You really ought to say something to her.’ So I had a quiet word with her at dinner. She was embarrassed. Well, she obviously thought about it overnight, because the next day she suddenly stood up and launched into a three-minute Thatcher special. I can’t remember the topic, but you can imagine. The room was stunned. Here’s something for your conspiracy theorists. As a result of that speech, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger and the other Americans fell in love with her. They brought her over to America, took her around in limousines, and introduced her to everyone. Jon Ronson, Who Pulls the Strings?
She had been forced to resign by her colleagues … giving her just four days to pack her bags and go. Margaret Thatcher had dominated parliament for eleven and a half years, the longest serving prime minister this century. She went out in great style. Nick Broomfield, Tracking Down Maggie, 1994
She attributed her beliefs to him [father]; she said she owed him everything. ibid.
Mrs Thatcher had taken elocution lessons. ibid.
Maggie even had a special song written for her: It’s Thacher for Me. Some people have even professed to fantasizing about the Iron Lady. Christopher Hitchens describes an incident in the House of Lords. ibid.
She didn’t appoint a single woman to a senior government position. ibid.
‘She never mentions her mother.’ ibid.
By the time Mrs Thatcher resigned, Mark owned houses all over the world. ibid.
‘The favourite son who can do no wrong.’ ibid.
Maggie made mincemeat of Robin Day [re Oman and son’s contract] ibid.
Lady Thatcher’s personal detective: we never knew his name. ibid.
We heard reports about Mark’s Thatcher’s apparent involvement in arms exports to Iraq. ibid.
Mrs Thatcher took over a demoralised Tory party. The modern Britain the Conservatives had tried to build in the ’50s and ’60s had collapsed. In its place she offered a new vision: she too would modernise the economy and make it grow, but the wealth produced would recreate an older form of Britain. Adam Curtis, The Living Dead III: The Attic, BBC 1995
One of Mrs Thatcher’s aims was to generate a new sense of pride in Britain’s past. ibid.
Mrs Thatcher soon established herself as a new kind of leader driven by a messianic vision. But her party didn’t realise the price the country would have to pay to be reborn in her terms. ibid.
The powerful historical forces she [Thatcher] had summoned up in Ireland were not under her control. ibid.
In 1979 I was a young reporter working for ITN. Amazingly, on 4th May I was actually given the job of reporting Mrs Thatcher’s arrival in Downing Street for the first time live … I would be following Maggie around the world on and off for the next eleven and a half years. Jon Snow: Maggie & Me, Channel 4 2013