Margaret Thatcher

To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

I don't mind how much my ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

The battle for freedom is never over. It is a continuous struggle.

Choice is the essential element of prosperity.

In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.

We were the first to say we must protect the environment.

I have a woman's instinct to know when to send troops in.

The facts of life are conservative.

Let our children grow tall and some grow stronger than others.

Democratic nations must try to find ways to work together for the common good.

I owe everything to my parents.

Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbor's eccentricities than being an incessant visitor.

The spirit of the individual is as much endangered by the welfare state as by the iron fist of the state.

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.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

Advisers recommend, they don't decide.

We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

It's a funny old world.

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work.

The path to power was open to me because I was the right person to take it.