Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.
Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.
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.
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.
I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.
In the Conservative Party we have no truck with outmoded Marxist doctrine about class warfare. For us it is not who you are, who your family is or where you come from that matters, but what you are and what you can do for your country that counts.
People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.
We are a British nation with British characteristics. Every country can take some small minorities and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened.
You know the critical thing with the Communist countries is Communism, which by definition consists of control by the government.
I believe in the acceptance of personal responsibility, freedom of choice, and the British Empire, which took freedom and the rule of law to countries which would never have known it otherwise.
In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries – and poor people – are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.
It is in a country’s interests to keep faith with its allies. States in this sense are like people. If you have a reputation for exacting favors and not returning them, the favours dry up.
I have very strong views about Europe. We’re quite the best country. We rescued them. We’re not going to get entangled with them. We’ve got to keep our own independence. Is that clear?
It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.
Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.
Nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in a distant country.
Why, in a country of free speech, are there phone bills?
Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it’s more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army.