“I don’t think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime.”

New ideas are created when they can be discussed freely, but if there is a correct view then you cease to have new ideas.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

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

Those who were born at the depths of one great crisis who would be able to cope with the next.

Politicians should resist the temptation to consider themselves experts in fields where they have no experience.

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

All collectivism is always conducive to oppression: it is only the victims who differ.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.

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

Any leader has to have a certain amount of steel in them, so I am not that put out being called the Iron Lady.

While the home must always be the center of one’s life, it should not be the boundary of one’s ambitions.

I’m back, and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign ‘The Mummy Returns’

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

For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defense in favor of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other’s good intentions.

And I will go on criticizing Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain.

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.

In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

Music bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart. I wish my life had more of it.

I emphasize that I am full of ambition and hope and of full charm of life. But I can renounce all at the time of need, and that is the real sacrifice.

Life is really very simple. What we give out, we get back.

Refuse to be disheartened, discouraged, distracted from your goals in life.

I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, ‘It’s a wrap,’ it’s gone completely. I’m a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.

A man learns all his life and dies the day he thinks that he has learnt everything.