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If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership -- you are practicing followership.

Margaret Thatcher

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Margaret Thatcher
Age: 87 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 13
Died: 2013
Died: April 8
Autobiographer
Barrister
Business Executive
Chemist
Former Prime Minister Of The United Kingdom
Politician
Scientist
Statesperson
Baroness Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher
Margaret Roberts
Maggie Thatcher
Baroness Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Roberts
Lady Thatcher
Mrs. Thatcher
Mrs. T
Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven
Practicing
Polls
Leadership
Opinion
Guided

More quotes by Margaret Thatcher

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If... many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.
Margaret Thatcher
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For Dicey, writing in 1885, and for me reading him some seventy years later, the rule of law still had a very English, or at least Anglo-Saxon, feel to it. It was later, through Hayek's masterpieces The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation and Liberty that I really came to think this principle as having wider application.
Margaret Thatcher
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Free enterprise has enabled the creative and the acquisitive urges of man to be given expression in a way which benefits all members of society. Let free enterprise fight back now, not for itself, but for all those who believe in freedom.
Margaret Thatcher
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I want to get totally rid of class distinction. As someone put it one of the papers this morning: Marks and Spencer have triumphed over Karl Marx and Engels.
Margaret Thatcher
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I exercise my right as a free citizen to spend my own money in my own way, so that I can go on the day, the time, to the doctor I choose and get out fast.
Margaret Thatcher
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Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.
Margaret Thatcher
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Bribing regimes to comply with requirements which they should have acknowledged in the first place is not a process that appeals to me.
Margaret Thatcher
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Let us never forget this fundamental truth: The State has no source of money other than the money people themselves earn.
Margaret Thatcher
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One only gets to the top rung on the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly, all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you - suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, 'Well, I'll have a go, too.'
Margaret Thatcher
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Object to merit and distinction, and you're setting your face against quality, independence, originality, genius against all the richness and variety of life. When you hold back the successful, you penalize those who need help.
Margaret Thatcher
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Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.
Margaret Thatcher
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And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark divisive clouds of Marxist socialism.
Margaret Thatcher
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When I look at him [Edward Heath] and he looks at me, I don't feel that it is a man looking at a woman. More like a woman being looked at by another woman.
Margaret Thatcher
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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.
Margaret Thatcher
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As the former dissident Vladimir Bukovsky once remarked – referring to the Russian proverb to the effect that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs – he had seen plenty of broken eggs, but never tasted any omelette.
Margaret Thatcher
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We are not in politics to ignore peoples' worries, we are in politics to deal with them.
Margaret Thatcher
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Let's make it clear: the Conservative Party has no plans for new NHS charges.
Margaret Thatcher
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I started out in life with two great advantages: No money and good parents.
Margaret Thatcher
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I'm standing up for the right of self-determination. I'm standing up for our territory. I'm standing up for our people. I'm standing up for international law. I'm standing up for all those territories - those small territories and peoples the world over - who, if someone doesn't stand up and say to an invader 'enough, stop', would be at risk.
Margaret Thatcher
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Young people ought not to be idle, it is very bad for them.
Margaret Thatcher