Quotes By Margaret Thatcher

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

It's a funny old world.

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.

The battle for women's rights has been largely won.

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

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

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.

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

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

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 percent.

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.

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.

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

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

People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.

What Britain needs is an iron lady.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

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

Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

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

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

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.