"People talk about a 'free' service. It is not free. You have to pay for it." — Conservative Party Conference (1983)

"Do not rely on international organisations like the UN or European Community to make or to keep a peace with freedom and justice. There is no substitute for national leadership." — Speech to the National Press Club (1993)

“Do not use the United Nations for something it was not founded for. You have 170 nations. They don’t all agree that democracy is the best way to conduct affairs. They don’t all have the same view of human rights as we have. You can’t put executive decisions into their hands about war and peace.”

"We are British and we're proud of it, proud of our traditions, proud of our national character, proud of our Westminster Parliament. We want to preserve them and we shall." — Speech to Nottingham European Election Rally (1989)

"As someone who believes in Britain — our identity and institutions, our history and destiny — I reject the notion that we should effectively cease to govern ourselves, as more and more powers are passed to the European Institutions."

"It is a matter of plain common sense that we cannot totally abolish frontier controls if we are also to protect our citizens from crime and stop the movement of drugs, of terrorists and of illegal immigrants."

"The Socialist concept that rights belong 'collectively' to groups, and not to individuals, is extremely dangerous. It implies that some men, those in groups, are entitled to such rights, while others are not. If this sounds rather theoretical, let me remind you how it can work out in practice. The most conspicuous example is the Soviet Union. There, more than anywhere else, the collectivist dogma has—in the name of the “people” —made the State the owner and manager of all the means of production, distribution and exchange. All rights in Russia are 'collective rights'. All justice is 'social justice'; all assets are 'public assets'; even morality is judged by reference to 'Socialist ethics', 'State crimes' or 'Marxist-Leninist principles'. And the result? Far from abolishing poverty, Socialism has kept the vast majority of the Soviet people miles behind the western world in standards of living and quality of life." — Speech to Liberal Federal Council in Canberra (1976)

"We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose. But it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one's own country; for these have been the source of Europe's vitality through the centuries." ― Speech to the College of Europe ("The Bruges Speech")

"I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t."

"State planners do not have to suffer the consequences of their mistakes. It's the taxpayers who have to pick up the bill." — Speech to Conservative Party Conference (1986)

“If during the lifetime of the same government you serve three different ministers, you see how the Civil Service works...” — Margaret Thatcher TV Interview with Sir Laurens van der Post, 30 December 1982

"Do you like being a woman?"

"I will never negotiate with people who use coercion and violence to achieve their objective. They are the enemies of democracy."

"Patriotism links the individual with the nation, not only with its present but with its past and with its future, with our forebears and those yet to be—as Burke put it. Patriotism means that we cherish a nation's history and feel concern for its future long after we ourselves have gone. It means that we will be prepared to make any sacrifices for the sake of our country and the things for which it stands."

"We believe that individuals have a right to liberty that no state can take away. That Government is the servant of the people, not its master. That the role of Government is to strengthen our freedom, not deny it. That the economic role of Government is to establish a climate in which enterprise can flourish, not to elbow enterprise out of the way. That a wise Government will spread opportunities, but that individuals must seize them. That citizens who are protected by the law have a duty to assist in maintaining the law. That freedom entails responsibilities, first to the family, then to neighbours, then to the nation—and beyond. That a strong Britain is the surest guarantor of peace." — Speech to Conservative Party Conference (1988)

“Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, as much as my constituency is.” — Margaret Thatcher, 1981

"This heinous attack upon America was an attack upon us all. With America, Britain stands in the front line against Islamist fanatics who hate our beliefs, our liberties and our citizens. We must not falter. We must not fail." — Margaret Thatcher, Statement on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, 11 September 2006.

"Through discussion we both teach and learn - and the wider the discussion goes, the more likely we are to increase the stock of human understanding. Freedom of discussion may be threatened in several ways. Most obviously it may be deliberately suppressed, discouraged or penalised by the authorities. It may also be reduced as individuals are intimidated out of their beliefs by those subtle and corrupting pressures so well described by Solzhenitsyn as the “censorship of fashion”. [...] There is also a material loss when a dull uniformity, of the sort which socialism, like other totalitarian impulses before it, encourages, comes to replace individuality and diversity. A glance at our distinctive history illustrates this. The West attained its economic dominance because there has been a spirit of enterprise and competition to solve technical problems and then to apply the solutions to men's practical needs. That is surely what differentiates our modern European civilisation from those of earlier times. The Chinese discovered the magnetic compass - but there was no economic incentive for them to navigate the world. The Tibetans, I believe, discovered turbine movement: but they were content to use it for the rotation of their prayer wheels. The Byzantines discovered clockwork of a kind - and they used it to levitate the emperor in order to impress the ambassadors of barbarian Europe. But we do not need to reach back so far into the past in order to show how free discussion and economic progress are strongly, if subtly, linked. Just look around you at the economic failure of the Communist command economy. A totalitarian state may manage - as the success of Stalin's Red Army in the '40s showed - to apply force and terror to produce huge quantities of armaments; but the development and application of technology requires argument, reasoned discussion and experiment - minds which can never be satisfied with the limits of present knowledge. That is why the Soviet Union could not match the technology behind America's SDI programme: it is the link between the moral and the military failure of communism." — Speech at Jagiellonian University (1991)

"Children who need to be able to express themselves in clear English are being taught political slogans. And children who need encouragement—and children do so much need encouragement—so many children—they are being taught that our society offers them no future. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life—yes cheated." ― Speech to Conservative Party Conference (1987) #education #children

"In a democracy, where political leaders come and go, and with them the philosophies that they promote, the Monarch is a rock of stability." Queen Elizabeth II, 21st April 1926 – 8th September 2022