Thatcher Quotes - page 4
I played my part in turning the sick country of Europe into one of the most successful and respected in the world. After ten years of Mrs. Thatcher's premiership the talk of the 'English disease' has been replaced by wonder at the 'Thatcher miracle'. Britain the laggard has become Britain the leader and our policies have become the standard against which others are measured.
Norman Tebbit
Black condemned the 1966 decision made by Harold Wilson to pull out of the Persian Gulf and scrap the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers. He regarded the resignation of Christopher Mayhew, Minister of Defence for the Navy as "the last resonance of good sense in that country until Maggie Thatcher came in."
Conrad Black
Hayek's blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.
John N. Gray
My attitude would be the same as the attitude of the working class in Germany when the Nazis came to power. It does not mean that because at some stage you elect a government that you tolerate its existence. You oppose it...[I will oppose a second-term Thatcher government] as vigorously as I possibly can.
Arthur Scargill
Thatcher also gave the following quote a few weeks later : I was brought up by a Victorian grandmother. You were taught to work jolly hard, you were taught to improve yourself, you were taught self-reliance, you were taught to live within your income, you were taught that cleanliness was next to godliness. You were taught self-respect, you were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour, you were taught tremendous pride in your country, you were taught to be a good member of your community. All of these things are Victorian values. [...] They are also perennial values as well.
Margaret Thatcher
As we speak today, NATO is on Russia's borders, From the Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. [That] the promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only President George H.W.] Bush, it was the French leader François Mitterrand, it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.
Chris Hedges
[W]hat Mrs Thatcher seems to have sensed-is that that part of the liberal intelligentsia which grew up in the shadow of Hitler, Spain and Unemployment is deeply alienated from the Labour party. It has never liked trades unions even though, in the form of the 'ragged-trouser generation' (as Mr Stuart Hampshire calls it), it was willing, when young, to profess sympathy for the working classes whom it idolized in ignorance and at a distance and, quite wrongly, regarded as its natural ally in the fight against illiberal, reactionary, capitalistic Conservatism.
Maurice Cowling
We've been working to restore the political system to bring out all that was best in the British character. That's what we've done. It's called Thatcherism – it's got nothing to do with Thatcher except that I was merely the vehicle for it. But it is in everything I do. It's a mixture of fundamentally sound economics. You live within your means; you have honest money, so therefore you don't make reckless promises. You recognise human nature is such that it needs incentives to work harder, so you cut your tax. It is about being worthwhile and honourable. And about the family. And about that something which is really rather unique and enterprising in the British character – it's about how we built an Empire, and how we gave sound administration and sound law to large areas of the world. All those things are still there in the British people aren't they?
Margaret Thatcher
At the start of the oil glut, a climactic set of economic relations took shape led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (and joined eagerly by President Reagan and his advisors) that would be called "globalism.” It was not so much a new idea as the logical and inevitable result of mature self-organizing systems elaborating themselves under the influence of renewed, immense energy inputs-the ultimate cheap-oil way of doing business in the closed system [in respect to matter] that is the planet Earth. It entailed the maximization of short-term profit and the minimization of care for future generations. It was the ultimate generator of entropy.
James Howard Kunstler
