Thatcher quotes:

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  • I want to be America's Margaret Thatcher. I will be the next Iron Lady. -- Michele Bachmann
  • No British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher. -- Steven Patrick Morrissey
  • If there is a better singer in England than Craig David, then I am Margaret Thatcher. -- Elton John
  • Under Thatcher, who ruled us with an iron rod, great art was made. Amazing designers and musicians. Acid house was born. Very colourful and progressive. -- Noel Gallagher
  • But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You're looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues. -- George H. W. Bush
  • Spare me this sanctimony about politeness, please. There are millions of people in this country who hate the very word 'Thatcher' and 'Thatcherism,' which continues until this day. -- George Galloway
  • My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good. -- John Lydon
  • It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. -- Douglas Alexander
  • Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe. -- Douglas Hurd
  • Margaret Thatcher was not a malicious person. She was a person who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, the unfairness and disadvantaging consequences of the application of what she thought to be a renewing ideology. -- Neil Kinnock
  • By the way, I don't mean to pick nits here, but Obama has just ordered the flag at half-mast for 10 days for Mandela. He did not order the flag at half-mast at all for Lady Thatcher. -- Rush Limbaugh
  • It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman president. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat. -- Jim Webb
  • Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did more to liberate people by defeating the Soviet Union and freeing eastern Europe than the Obamas, the Clintons, and Kerrys of this world ever have. They were all on the wrong side of that debate. -- Rush Limbaugh
  • Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it. -- Steven Patrick Morrissey
  • Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around - decisively - the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries. -- Paul Johnson
  • Among other things they picked out a detail that Charles had been offered the Governorship of Hong Kong in its dying days by Thatcher in return for shutting up about the inner cities. He quite rightly in my view led the paper on this story. -- Anthony Holden
  • It is well known that my husband and Lady Thatcher enjoyed a very special relationship as leaders of their respective countries during one of the most difficult and pivotal periods in modern history. Ronnie and Margaret were political soul mates, committed to freedom and resolved to end Communism. -- Nancy Reagan
  • Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history. -- Monica Crowley
  • When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street. -- Jimmy Reid
  • The BBC sports department when I was there was seriously to the right of Ghengis Khan, and if people think I am strange, they should have met some of the production staff I worked with. Margaret Thatcher and the Queen were the pin up girls for many of them. -- David Icke
  • Everyone wants to be immortal. Few are. Margaret Thatcher is. Why? Because her values are timeless, eternal. Tap anyone on the shoulder anywhere in the world, and ask what Mrs Thatcher believed in, and they will tell you. They can give a clear answer to what she 'stood for.' -- Maurice Saatchi
  • Mrs Thatcher was not lightly bullied. -- Michael Heseltine
  • Mrs Thatcher requires devotion as well as obedience. -- Julian Critchley
  • I'm quoting Margaret Thatcher. I quote her frequently. -- Carly Fiorina
  • I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right. -- Tony Blair
  • I think Churchill would be appalled at the Thatcher government. -- Edward Heath
  • The women's movement in England was totally against Margaret Thatcher. -- Gloria Steinem
  • She ( Margaret Thatcher )is democratic enough to talk down to anyone -- Austin Mitchell
  • The fact is that Margaret Thatcher was never really a Conservative. -- Robert Rhodes James
  • I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect. -- Bob Hawke
  • The sorrow of the IRA Brighton bombing is that Thatcher escaped unscathed. -- Steven Morrissey
  • The only thing that could possibly save British politics would be Margaret Thatcher's assassin. -- Steven Morrissey
  • As Margaret Thatcher came up in the world, so the Conservative Party came down. -- Julian Critchley
  • Thatcher was the motivation for my entire political career. I hated everything she stood for. -- Nicola Sturgeon
  • No British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher. -- Steven Patrick Morrissey
  • Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics, -- Meryl Streep
  • John Redwood is a young man but, let's face it, so was Margaret Thatcher in 1975. -- Edward Leigh
  • I grew up in London under Thatcher and that really was disgusting. A feeding frenzy. -- Denise Mina
  • For us she is not the iron lady. She is the kind, dear Mrs. Thatcher. -- Alexander Dubcek
  • The women can always choose the patriarchal models, and you end up with a Margaret Thatcher. -- Cornel West
  • The danger with Margret Thatcher is that when she speaks without thinking she says what she thinks. -- Norman St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley
  • Her iron will won international respect. Her unabashed femininity gained women's. Margaret Thatcher was a lady's lady. -- Louise Burfitt-Dons
  • Mrs. Thatcher responded to our liberation of Grenada with the sounds of a somewhat hypersensitive Neville Chamberlain. -- Emmett Tyrrell
  • Geoffrey [Howe] and I were mates, and he disagreed with [ Margaret Thatcher] position. So, we cooperated surreptitiously. -- Bob Hawke
  • I cherish the accomplishments of Margaret Thatcher and will always count her as one of my role models. -- Sarah Palin
  • If you asked her (Margaret Thatcher) about Sinai, she would probably think it was the plural for sinus. -- Jonathan Aitken
  • If Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister at the time, there would have been no Treaty of Maastricht. -- Douglas Hurd
  • I am not running as Son of Margaret Thatcher. I have my own priorities and my own programmes. -- John Major
  • I grew up in a very political household. My mum used to shout at the television. At Mrs. Thatcher. -- Cherie Lunghi
  • I do think British and American politics rhyme. They go in cycles. They go in Thatcher-Reagan cycles, Blair-Clinton cycles. -- David Brooks
  • Margaret Thatcher was the first political leader in any major country to warn of the dangers of climate change -- Ed Miliband
  • I never was a great Thatcher fan, and it wasn't a sad day in my life when she resigned. -- Jim Broadbent
  • Paddy Ashdown is the only party leader who's a trained killer. Although, to be fair, Mrs Thatcher was self taught. -- Charles Kennedy
  • Remember how Margaret Thatcher came to believe that abroad was more important than at home? Didn't do her much good. -- Simon Hoggart
  • It is quite clear to me that the Tory Party will get rid of Mrs Thatcher in about 3 years time. -- Harold Wilson
  • Do you know what Margaret Thatcher did in her first Budget? Introduced VAT on yachts! It somewhat ruined my retirement -- Edward Heath
  • Margaret Thatcher - this great lady has not only served her country well, she has served the free world well. -- Ronald Reagan
  • Margaret Thatcher once said, "If you want something talked about, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." -- Carly Fiorina
  • It is quite clear that history will record that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister this country has had since Churchill. -- Nigel Lawson
  • The nanny seemed to be extinct until 1975, when, like the coelacanth, she suddenly and unexpectedly reappeared in the shape of Margaret Thatcher. -- Simon Hoggart
  • The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War. -- Douglas Hurd
  • In the time of Mrs Thatcher the church, to give it its due, spoke out and was an enemy of the Conservative government. -- Alan Green
  • Mrs Thatcher tells us she has given the French President a piece of her mind... not a gift I would receive with alacrity. -- Denis Healey
  • Margaret Thatcher was very good for the arts in so far as it gave people a real focus for something to be against. -- Martin Parr
  • About Thatcher's death: Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out on competetive tender and accept the cheapest bid. That's what she would have wanted. -- Ken Loach
  • Anyone who supposed that when Margaret Thatcher left Number Ten she was going to take a Trappist vow did not know that formidable politician. -- Chris Patten
  • The world is undoubtedly a safer, freer place because Thatcher - like Reagan - refused to back down when it came to defending freedom. -- Bob Barr
  • Margaret Thatcher said,you know the problem with socialism is that eventually it will run out of other people's money. And she was absolutely right. -- Jedediah Bila
  • Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done. -- Edward Abbey
  • I often compare Margaret Thatcher with Florence Nightingale. She stalks through the wards of our hospitals as a lady with a lamp. Unfortunately, it's a blowlamp. -- Denis Healey
  • When England was a kingdom, we had a king. When we were an empire, we had an emperor. Now we're a country, and we have Margaret Thatcher. -- Kenny Everett
  • --
  • I am not as cross about Thatcher now as I was in the '80s. Begrudgingly, I can see that some of her policies helped modernise Britain. -- Martin Parr
  • In excluding me from the shadow cabinet, Margaret Thatcher has chosen what I believe to be the only wholly honest solution and one which I accept and welcome. -- Edward Heath
  • Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe. -- Douglas Hurd
  • I admired Margaret Thatcher - while abhorring much of what she offered - because she was so clearly a leader of huge substance. Blair was the dismal opposite. -- Martin Jacques
  • For the first time perhaps since Margaret Thatcher, we will have at the head of the Conservative Party someone who is genuinely an equal match for Tony Blair. -- Tim Yeo
  • Like Marxism, Thatcherism is, in fact, riddled with contradictions. Mrs. Thatcher, on the other hand, is free of doubt; she is the label on the can of worms. -- Julian Critchley
  • When I was a boy during Thatcher, you watched elections and wept in disbelief as the whole country turned blue, Scotland turned red, and we still got the Tories. -- John Niven
  • Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships. -- Nina Bawden
  • Like John Major in her wake, Thatcher was convinced that she understood the Scots - yet couldn't understand why we remained so stubbornly resistant towards the notion of understanding her. -- Charles Kennedy
  • For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person (on Margaret Thatcher) -- Frankie Boyle
  • Margaret Thatcher made tough decisions. She put people out of work and she stood up to labor unions and she did a lot of things that I did not like. -- Harvey Weinstein
  • I had to live and breathe Margaret Thatcher for a few months. I totally engulfed myself in her life. I read her autobiography and a biography, 'The Grocer's Daughter.' -- Alexandra Roach
  • For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the United States, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here. -- Jon Weisman
  • So all the system was running down and collapsing. Mrs. Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975, and she clearly wanted to strike out and do something different. -- Kenneth Baker
  • --
  • So all the system was running down and collapsing. Mrs. Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975, and she clearly wanted to strike out and do something different. -- Kenneth Baker
  • What's your name?" "Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer." "That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?" "Yes -- Mark Twain
  • Thatcher came under pressure from right wing backbenchers to shut up the Prince of Wales and there was a deal done between them where he did actually shut up in the end. -- Anthony Holden
  • I think it's essential for comic writers to have a hate figure, a despot, a regime to react against, and I think Thatcher was perfect for me, I loathed everything she stood for. -- Sue Townsend
  • Politically, I thought [Margaret Thatcher] stank. I think she had a real fight on her hands to get where she got, but I don't believe that her conviction was for the greater good. -- Andrea Riseborough
  • It was a remarkable relationship. Margaret [Thatcher] and I had a love/hate relationship. She was always defending the South African regime and we had some terrible fights, including an enormous one in Canada. -- Bob Hawke
  • I only met Margaret Thatcher twice. The thing that I thought about meeting her was how extraordinarily intelligent she was. You really had to be on your game; otherwise, she'd make mincemeat of you. -- Salman Rushdie
  • ...a Conservative backbencher called Margaret Thatcher managed, despite front bench opposition, to get enacted her Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, which was aimed at opening up council meetings to both press and public. -- Clive Ponting
  • Margaret Thatcher was a great leader for her nation at a pivotal and a perilous time. So, I find the comparison flattering, but that's up to others to say whether that comparison is justified. -- Carly Fiorina
  • I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state. -- Thom Yorke
  • Yeah, I did need a lot of breath [to play Margaret Thatcher]. I needed much more breath than I have, after all of my expensive drama school training. I couldn't keep up with her. -- Meryl Streep
  • My only thought about Margaret Thatcher is the same one I had about Ronald Reagan. I hated a lot of what they did, but once in a while a country just needs a change. -- Gail Collins
  • Dennis Thatcher, husband of Margaret Thatcher, when asked who wore the pants in his house, said "I do, and I also wash and iron them." I only like two kinds of men; domestic and foreign. -- Mae West
  • We stand up and proudly proclaim that Washington is not our caretaker and we reject a state, in Margaret Thatcher's words, a state that takes too much from us to do too much for us. -- Rick Perry
  • If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism. -- Malcolm Turnbull
  • The Establishment decided Thatcher's ideas were safer with a strong Blair government than with a weak Major government. We are given all these personalities to choose between to disguise the fact that the policies are the same. -- Tony Benn
  • Margaret Thatcher - a woman I greatly admire - once said that she was not content to manage the decline of a great nation. Neither am I. I am prepared to lead the resurgence of a great nation. -- Carly Fiorina
  • I certainly wasn't a fan of Thatcher's politics. People liked to label us as children of Thatcher. What nonsense. The real children of Thatcher came in the 1990s, and had no interest in politics. The Oasis, Britpop scene. -- Gary Kemp
  • I became an insomniac, really, hardly slept at all, didn't even try to. And it's carried on. I hate to say I only need as much sleep as Mrs. Thatcher, but I can cope really well on five hours. -- Sue Townsend
  • Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations... I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher... We've got it all. -- Barack Obama
  • Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, dramatically cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised. -- Jon Weisman
  • When women get great roles in life, they start to get great roles in films and TV. Look at Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, and Mrs. Thatcher. Because those images are coming at us in life, they are reflected in acting. -- Helen Mirren
  • On December 22, 1986, finding I was body positive, I set myself a target: I would disclose my secret and survive Margaret Thatcher. I did. Now I have set my sights on the millennium and a world where we are all equal. -- Derek Jarman
  • Eureka' was very bad timing. The early 1980s: Reagan and Thatcher were in, greed was good, and here was a film about the richest man in the world who still couldn't be happy. Politically and sociologically, it was out of step. -- Nicolas Roeg
  • One of the most influential women of the 20th century? Well, that may be overdoing it. When one thinks of really influential women, my mind turns to Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, ... some of the true political leaders in their own right. -- William A. Rusher
  • Margaret Thatcher was beyond argument a great Prime Minister. Her tragedy is that she may be remembered less for the brilliance of her many achievements than for the recklessness with which she later sought to impose her own increasingly uncompromising views. -- Geoffrey Howe
  • Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it. -- Steven Patrick Morrissey
  • Tabloid discussion of bad children always blames baby-boomer liberals, careerist mothers and fashion-crazed Nathan Barley types who think it's all enormously funny. But the centre-leftish psycho-thinker Oliver James says it's all down to the Thatcher-and-after culture of turbo-capitalism, making people acquisitive and unsatisfied. -- Peter York
  • My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair. -- Yanis Varoufakis
  • The government are considering spending £3million on a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher when she dies. For £3million they could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we'll dig a hole deep enough to deliver her to Satan ourselves. -- Frankie Boyle
  • I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time. -- Boy George
  • Can you suggest any suitable aspersions to spread abroad about Mrs. Thatcher? It is idle to suggest she has unnatural relations with Mrs. Barbara Castle; what is needed is something socially lower: that she eats asparagus with knife and fork, or serves instant mash potatoes. -- Sylvia Townsend Warner
  • The scumbags are taking over the streets. I don't know what David Cameron and Gordon Brown are going to do about it. It all goes back to the Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher) years. It sounds like a cliché but that's when the rot set in. -- Noel Gallagher
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