Margaret Thatcher Zitate

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„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.“

“Our freedoms depended on our having independence, independence in the wage packet, and independence of the Government…If you rely always on a Government for your wage packet, then the source of your independence to fight that Government has gone…Already one person in four works in the public sector. This is more than enough, and we must stop the encroachment from going any further.”

“Europe' in anything other than the geographical sense is a wholly artificial construct. It makes no sense at all to lump together Beethoven and Debussy, Voltaire and Burke, Vermeer and Picasso, Notre Dame and St Paul's, boiled beef and bouillabaisse, and portray them as elements of a 'European' musical, philosophical, artistic, architectural or gastronomic reality. If Europe charms us, as it has so often charmed me, it is precisely because of its contrasts and contradictions, not its coherence and continuity.”

“[Thatcher] began by asking what benefits ordinary people had received after 3½ years of Socialism. The Government should do what any good housewife would do if money was short—look at their accounts and see what was wrong.”

“I could never have signed this treaty. I hope that that is clear to all who have heard me.”

“For my part, I favour an approach to statecraft that embraces principles, as long as it is not stifled by them; and I prefer such principles to be accompanied by steel along with good intentions.”

“I hate extremes of any kind. Communism and the National Front both seek the domination of the state over the individual. They both, I believe crush the right of the individual. To me, therefore, they are parties of a similar kind. All my life I have stood against banning Communism or other extremist organisations because, if you do that, they go underground and it gives them an excitement that they don't get if they are allowed to pursue their policies openly. We'll beat them into the ground on argument… The National Front is a Socialist Front.”

“I must be absolutely clear about this. Britain cannot accept the present situation on the Budget. It is demonstrably unjust. It is politically indefensible: I cannot play Sister Bountiful to the Community while my own electorate are being asked to forego improvements in the fields of health, education, welfare and the rest.”

“I believe the police are upholding the law. They are not upholding the Government. This is not a dispute between miners and Government. This is a dispute between miners and miners. They have in their constitution the right to have a ballot. They have not been able to have a national ballot yet. Many of them have had local ballots. This is a dispute between miners and miners. It is some of the miners who are trying to stop other miners going to work. It is the police who are in charge of upholding the law…The police have been wonderful.”

“The [Labour] moderates split off and that split of the moderates delayed the realignment of British politics for at least one generation and possibly two, because as a conservative passionately believing in freedom under the law and believing that socialism cannot stand for that, the realignment - you hear me say my job is to stay in long enough so that everyone knows that socialism and the British character do not mix, so socialism has got to go - is to get the fundamental realignment which I think is in keeping with the British character, which is two parties, a free enterprise party, because if you have political freedom under the rule of law you have got to have economic freedom as well. It is to bring about that can only be done really by eventually the Labour Party splitting off the Left and rejecting the Clause 4 and the command economy, and then we really should get a realignment.”

“This Party of ours has been on the defensive for too long. The time has come to counter-attack…The intellectual counter-attack is as important as the counter-attack in Parliament and in the constituencies. If we can win the battle of ideas, then the war will already be half-won.”

“My father, more perceptive than many, wryly commented that by the time I was an adult there might not be an Indian Civil Service to enter. He turned out to be right. I had to settle for British politics instead.”

“In considering our traditional ties with the Commonwealth we should remember that it now differs greatly from the entity which existed 20 or 30 years ago. Many of us do not feel quite the same allegiance to Archbishop Makarios or Doctor Nkrumah or to people like Jomo Kenyatta as we do towards Mr. Menzies of Australia.”

“It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see.”

“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.”

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

“Now, that brings me to the Liberal Party. I gather that during the last few days there have been some ill-natured jokes about their new symbol, a bird of some kind, adopted by the Liberal Democrats at Blackpool. Politics is a serious business, and one should not lower the tone unduly. So I will say only this of the Liberal Democrat symbol and of the party it symbolises. This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. And now for something completely different.”

“I find that the conservatism which I follow does have some things in common with what Professor Hayek was preaching and also has some things in common with what you called old-fashioned Liberals. Let me just quote one, to whom I am devoted, John Stuart Mill on liberty. “A nation that dwarfs its citizens will find that with small men it can accomplish no great thing.” Is that not what I have been saying? Yes, it is partly perhaps old-fashioned liberalism… my pride that it has something in common with that… but that also has something in common with my belief that really nations are there to try to help people to bring out the best talents and abilities and initiatives in themselves and that, I think, is conserving the best in human nature and trying to change the rest, but trying to change it through the character of men and women.”

“I have thought long and deeply about the post of Foreign Secretary and have decided to offer it to Peter Carrington who – as I am sure you will agree – will do the job superbly.”

“I am sure you will agree that, in Britain with our democratic institutions and the need for a high degree of consent, some of the measures adopted in Chile are quite unacceptable. Our reform must be in line with our traditions and our Constitution. At times the process may seem painfully slow. But I am certain we shall achieve our reforms in our own way and in our own time. Then they will endure.”

“The battle for women's rights has been largely won. The days when they were demanded and discussed in strident tones should be gone for ever. And I hope they are. I hated those strident tones that you still hear from some Women's Libbers.”

“It is good to recall how our freedom has been gained in this country—not by great abstract campaigns but through the objections of ordinary men and women to having their money taken from them by the State. In the early days, people banded together and said to the then Government, “You shall not take our money before you have redressed our grievances”. It was their money, their wealth, which was the source of their independence against the Government.”

“Margaret Thatcher: …The first eleven and a half years have not been so bad – and with regard to a twilight, please remember that there are 24 hours in a day.”

“Many senior policemen put greater emphasis on maintaining 'order' than on upholding the law. In practice that meant failing to uphold the rights of individuals against the rule of the mob.”

“We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”

“Every political debate these days contains a lot about economic policies. So much so that sometimes I think people get a little tired of hearing about them. Naturally there is a cry that Government must put people before economics. Who could disagree? That is the very reason why we in our Party have constantly fought Marxism and Communism. Fought Marxism because of —its compulsory society —its nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. —its attempt to snuff out individual conscience. —the absence of the great voluntary societies which are so much a part of our way of life. —its denial of freedom to choose —its elevation of the values of the State above those of religion. Its denial of the right to educate children outside the state system. —its extinction of private property because property rights support human rights.”

“In a decision of the utmost gravity, Labour voted to give up Britain's independent nuclear deterrent unilaterally. Labour's defence policy—though "defence" is scarcely the word—is an absolute break with the defence policy of every British Government since the Second World War. Let there be no doubt about the gravity of that decision. You cannot be a loyal member of NATO while disavowing its fundamental strategy. A Labour Britain would be a neutralist Britain. It would be the greatest gain for the Soviet Union in forty years. And they would have got it without firing a shot.”

“I can't help reflecting that it's taken a Government headed by a housewife with experience of running a family to balance the books for the first time in twenty years—with a little left over for a rainy day.”

“A world without nuclear weapons may be a dream but you cannot base a sure defence on dreams. Without far greater trust and confidence between East and West than exists at present, a world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.”

“I do not believe that history is writ clear and unchallengeable. It doesn't just happen. History is made by people: its movement depends on small currents as well as great tides, on ideas, perceptions, will and courage, the ability to sense a trend, the will to act on understanding and intuition. It is up to us to give intellectual content and political direction to these new dissatisfactions with socialism in practice, with its material and moral failures, we must convert disillusion into understanding. If we fail, the tide will be lost. But if it is taken, the last quarter of our century can initiate a new renaissance matching anything in our island's long and outstanding history.”