People from my sort of background needed grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.
I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.
What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.
Naturally, it is with some temerity that the pupil speaks before the master, because you know more about the Common Market than anybody.
I am always on the job.
I remain totally convinced that when children are young, however busy we may be with the practical duties inside the home, themost important thing of all is to devbote enoughh time and care to their needs and problems.
Socialism is in no way a curate’s egg.
To accuse me of being too inflexible is poppycock.
Occupied Falklands are the thorn in my balls.
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?
Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.
There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditiionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe.
Of course, to be a mother and a housewife is a vocation of a very high kind. But I simply felt that it was not the whole of my vocation. I knew that I also wanted a career. A phrase that Irene Ward, MP for Tynemouth, and I often used was that ‘while the home must always be the centre of one’s life, it should not be the boundary of one’s ambitions’.
When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.
Consensus is 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. – Margaret Thatcher.
It’s no time to be wobbly, Geo.
Give me six men and true, and I will get policies through.
If you can’t afford it, you can’t have it.
In general, more nonsense was written about the so-called ‘feminine factor’ during my time in office than about almost anything else. I was always asked how it felt to be a woman Prime Minister. I would reply: ‘I don’t know: I’ve never experienced the alternative.
There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.