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

A week is a long time in politics.

Socialists are happy until they run out of other people’s money.

It pays to know the enemy – not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

It’s a funny old world.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd.

Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, somebody of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family, and the school.

I wasn’t lucky, I deserved it.

Of course, it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.

If you can’t afford it, you can’t have it.

The facts of life are conservative.

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

If you just set out to be liked, you will be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and would achieve nothing.

If you set out to be liked, you will accomplish nothing.

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.