In Honor of Margaret Thatcher’s 99th Birthday, Here Are Her 40 Best Quotes

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most significant figures of the 20^th century and one of the greatest female leaders in human history. She believed in free people, free markets, capitalism, and reducing the size of government. She played a role in helping to bring down the Soviet Union and won the Falklands War.

Well, the “Iron Lady,” one of the legends of conservatism, would have had her 99^th birthday on Sunday had she not passed away via a stroke in 2013. It’s sad that such a great leader is no longer with us, but we can learn from the vast number of brilliant things she said over the course of her lifetime.

40) “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

39) “Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.”

38) “To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

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

36) “I never hugged him, I bombed him.” — Thatcher on dictator, Muammar Gaddafi

35) “I too have a certain idea of America. Moreover, I would not feel entitled to say that of any other country, except my own. This is not just sentiment, though I always feel ten years younger — despite the jet lag — when I set foot on American soil there is something so positive, generous, and open about the people — and everything actually works. I also feel, though, that I have in a sense a share of America.”

34) “My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.”

33) “Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper.”

32) “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.’”

31) “It is always important in matters of high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge.”

30) “The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: No less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.”

29) “We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.”

28) “The facts of life are conservative.”

27) “There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter -- there is no charm or bar against it.”

26) “A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit, he plants his country’s flag.”

25) “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.”

24) “Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.”

23) “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.”

22) “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.”

21) “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”

20) “Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?’”

19) “Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”

18) “If you just set out to be liked, you will be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and would achieve nothing.”

17) “There are dangers in consensus: It could be an attempt to satisfy people holding no particular views about anything. ... No great party can survive except on the basis of firm beliefs about what it wants to do.”

16) “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”

15) “There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people’s lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth.”

14) “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.”

13) “Oh, but you know, you do not achieve anything without trouble, ever.”

12) “Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the church, the family, and the school.”

11) “The defence budget is one of the very few elements of public expenditure that can truly be described as essential. This point was well-made by a robust Labour Defence Minister, Denis (Now Lord) Healey, many years ago: ‘Once we have cut expenditure to the extent where our security is imperiled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.’”

10) “…The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone.”

9) “…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.”

8) “Do you think you would ever have heard of Christianity if the Apostles had gone out and said, ‘I believe in consensus?’”

7) “Socialists cry ‘Power to the people!’ and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean - power over people, power to the State.”

6) “Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them, the ends always seem to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.”

5) “Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.”

4) “They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people’s money.”

3) “To be free is better than to be unfree — always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.”

2) “It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken.”

1) “Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?”

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