Margaret Thatcher Zitate

seite 10

„So etwas wier die Gesellschaft gibt es nicht. Es gibt nur einzelne Männer und Frauen und es gibt Familen. Keine Regierung kann existieren, ohne dass die Menschen zunächst für sich selbst sorgen.“

„Es stört mich nicht, was meine Minister sagen, solange sie tun, was ich ihnen sage.“

„Das Rückgrat ist bei manchen Politikern unterentwickelt – vielleicht weil es so wenig benutzt wird.“

„Wir bitten nicht die Gemeinschaft oder sonst jemanden um Geld. Wir wollen einfach unser eigenes Geld zurück.“

„Nicht einer würde sich an den Guten Samariter erinnern, wenn der nur gute Absichten gehabt hätte. Er hatte auch Geld.“

„Meinen Erfolg habe ich vor allem der zuverlässigen Unterstützung durch meinen Mann zu verdanken.“

„Wenn Sie in der Politik etwas sagen wollen, fragen Sie einen Mann. Wenn Sie etwas erledigen möchten, fragen Sie eine Frau.“

„Wenn Sie in der Politik etwas gesagt haben wollen, fragen Sie einen Mann. Wenn Sie etwas getan haben wollen, fragen Sie eine Frau.“

„Der Thatcherismus wird überleben, weil er eine Sache des gesunden Menschenverstandes ist.“

„Die Dame lässt sich nicht verbiegen.“

„Es ist nicht Sache eines Politikers, allen zu gefallen.“

„Folge nicht anderen, lass andere dir folgen.“

„Für mich bedeutete die Wiedervereinigung ein völlig verändertes Europa. Genau das ist eingetreten.“

„Wenn ich etwas in der Politik verabscheue, dann den Typ des Aals, der sich vor lauter Geschmeidigkeit am liebsten selbst in sein Hinterteil beißen würde.“

„Europa wurde von der Geschichte gegründet. Amerika von der Philosophie.“

„Konsens erscheint mir als ein Prozess des Überbordwerfens aller Überzeugungen, Prinzipien, Werte und Grundsätze.“

„Jede Frau, die versteht einen Haushalt zu führen, wird dem Verständnis des Problems, ein Land zu führen, näher sein.“

„Wenn man die Hälfte seines politischen Lebens mit stumpfsinnigen Angelegenheiten wie der Umwelt zu tun hatte, ist es aufregend, eine richtige Krise an der Hand zu haben.“

„So etwas wie eine Gesellschaft gibt es nicht.“

„Wir haben aufgehört, eine Nation auf dem Rückzug zu sein.“

„Rückzug ist manchmal eine erforderliche Taktik. Als dauerhafte Politik aber nagt er an der Seele.“

„Zweimal haben wir die Deutschen geschlagen. Jetzt sind sie wieder da.“

„Es ist doch klar: Ihr Deutschen wollt nicht Deutschland in Europa verankern. Ihr wollt den Rest Europas in Deutschland verankern.“

„Geld fällt nicht vom Himmel. Man muss es sich hier auf Erden verdienen.“

„Folge nie der Menge, nur weil du Angst hast, anders zu sein.“

„Ich verschwende keine Zeit auf Argumente.“

„Ich glaube nicht, dass es zu meinen Lebzeiten einen weiblichen Premierminister geben wird.“

„Man muss eine Schlacht oft mehr als einmal schlagen, ehe man sie gewonnen hat.“

„Toleranz lernt man am besten in der Ehe. Unverheiratete Politiker haben davon keine Ahnung.“

„Ich kämpfe, ich kämpfe, um zu gewinnen.“

„Ihr könnt umkehren, wenn ihr wollt. Die Lady wird nicht umkehren.“

„Halten Sie mal die Luft an.“

„So leicht sind wir nicht zu dominieren, wir bestimmt nicht.“

„Wenn ich mich noch mal entscheiden könnte, würde ich nicht wieder in die Politik gehen. Das hat meine Familie kaputtgemacht.“

„Wir fordern einen Großteil unseres Geldes zurück.“

“The freedom of peoples depends fundamentally on the rule of law, a fair legal system. The place to have trials or accusations is a court of law, the Common Law that has come right up from Magna Carta, which has come right up through the British courts – a court of law is the place where you deal with these matters. If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it.”

“I set out to destroy socialism because I felt it was at odds with the character of the people. We were the first country in the world to roll back the frontiers of socialism, then roll forward the frontiers of freedom. We reclaimed our heritage; we are renewing it and carrying it forward.”

“Nazism (national Socialism) and communism (international socialism) were but two sides of the same coin.”

“Each demand for security, whether of employment, income or social position, implied the exclusion from such benefits of those outside the particular privileged group - and would generate demands for countervailing privileges from the excluded groups. Eventually, in such a situation every will lose.”

“May I make one point absolutely clear; the time we went there was a hunger strike on in the Maze, no-one has asked me, no-one in official authority or in high places has ever asked me to give political status to people who've been convicted of terrible crimes like murder, wounding, maming, causing explosions. That used to be asked. I think one of the reasons why we're not asked now is because we have got over our viewpoint and because everyone knows that this government will not budge on things which it regards as vital. There is no such thing as political murder. There is murder. There is no such things as causing explosions for political purposes and risking the lives of innocent men women and children. It is causing explosion, it is a crime, and they know that neither I, nor any member of my government will be moved on this. And we won through on that. And everyone knows it.”

“If we do not keep alive the flame of freedom that flame will go out, and every noble ideal will die with it. It is not by force of weapons but by force of ideas that we seek to spread liberty to the world' s oppressed. It is not only ideals, but conscience that impels us to do so. Is there conscience in the Kremlin? Do they ever ask themselves what is the purpose of life? What is it all for? Does the way they handled the Korean airliner atrocity suggest that they ever considered such questions? No. Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil. To them it is the system that counts, and all men must conform.”

“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

“The greatest division this nation has ever seen were the conflicts of trade unions towards the end of a Labour Government…That trade union movement…used their power against their members. They made them come out on strike when they didn't want to. They loved secondary picketing. They went and demonstrated outside companies where there was no dispute whatsoever, and sometimes closed them down. They were acting as they were later in the coal strike, before my whole trade union laws were through of this Government. They were out to use their power to hold the nation to ransom, to stop power from getting to the whole of manufacturing industry to damage people's jobs, to stop power from getting to every house in the country, power, heat and light to every housewife, every child, every school, every pensioner. You want division; you want conflict; you want hatred. There it was. It was that which Thatcherism—if you call it that—tried to stop. Not by arrogance, but by giving power to the ordinary, decent, honourable, trade union member who didn’t want to go on strike. By giving power to him over the Scargills of this world.”

“Our sovereignty does not come from Brussels—it is ours by right and by heritage.”

“We could have stopped this, we could still do so… But for the most part, we in the west have actually given comfort to the aggressor.”

“1989 will be remembered for decades to come as the year when half the people of half our continent began to throw off their chains. The messages on our banners in 1979—freedom, opportunity, family, enterprise, ownership—are now inscribed on the banners in Leipzig, Warsaw, Budapest and even Moscow…In 1979, we knew that we were starting a British revolution; in fact, we were the pioneers of a world revolution.”

“Communism never sleeps, never changes its objectives, nor must we. Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. Then one day we might export a little to those peoples who have to live without it. Let no one be under any misunderstanding about the inflexible resolve of Her Majesty's Government to strengthen our defences and to play our full part in the defence of a free Europe.”

“It may be inverted snobbishness but I don't want old style, Old Etonian Tories of the old school to succeed me and go back to the old complacent, consensus ways. John Major is someone who has fought his way up from the bottom and is far more in tune with the skilled and ambitious and worthwhile working classes than Douglas Hurd is.”

“We now know that bin Laden's terrorists had been planning their outrages for years. The propagation of their mad, bad ideology – decency forbids calling it a religion – had been taking place before our eyes. We were just too blind to see it. In short, the world had never ceased to be dangerous. But the West had ceased to be vigilant. Surely that is the most important lesson of this tragedy, and we must learn it if our civilisation is to survive.”

“For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions.”

“Pennies don't fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.”

“Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop.”

“The interviewer Stina Dabrowski said to Thatcher: "So when people criticise you and say what it led to the period when you were prime minister was that the rich became richer and the poor and the became poorer." Thatcher replied "That is not correct. The poor also became less poor, because the benefits at the bottom for those who are genuinely poor do go up. Money spend on education goes up and on the Health Service goes up so that is not true. What happens you might get a bigger gap but you might start here creates a small gap particularly if you're paying top tax today - 83% on earnings and income and 98% on savings. Your gap goes up, it does go up, but the whole thing moves up the gap, you must give people incentive!”

“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”

“Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man.”

“My job is to stop Britain from going red.”

“I'm the world's greatest fan of your President [Ronald Reagan], as you know. I think he's done terrific things and I think that in his recent speech, the keynote that he struck, that America is a confident leader of the free world, is the right one and I'm absolutely delighted at the way in which confidence had returned to the United States.”

“In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world.”

“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands and now we have to fight the enemy within, which is much more difficult but just as dangerous to liberty.”

“People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. The hon. Gentleman is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That way one will never create the wealth for better social services. as we have. What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy.”

“We suffered a tragedy not one of us could have thought would happen in our country. And we picked ourselves up and sorted ourselves out as all good British people do, and I thought, let us stand together for we are British! They were trying to destroy the fundamental freedom that is the birth-right of every British citizen, freedom, justice and democracy.”

“To many of us it seems that there is precious little difference between the policies of the Communist Party and the policies of the Labour Party.”

“I fight on, I fight to win.”

“Those who use this countries great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others, especially to those who, like Mr Powell, spent their war years in distinguished service in the Forces.”