Quote collection
508 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There are dangers in consensus: it could be an attempt to satisfy people holding no particular views about anything. ... No great party can survive except on the basis of firm beliefs about what it wants to do."
"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."
"I can't help to spit nails when just thinking about Trade Unions"
"You can't lead from the crowd."
"[On Ronald Reagan:] Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
"There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditiionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe."
"Under a Labour government, there's virtually nowhere you can put your savings where they would be safe from the state. ... If you put money in a sock they'd probably nationalize socks."
"Fear is not the basis for foreign policy."
"The National Health Service is safe with us. The principle of adequate healthcare should be provided for all regardless of ability to pay must be the function of any arrangements for financing the NHS. We stand by that."
"New technology is the true friend of full employment; the indispensable ally of progress; and the surest guarantee of prosperity."
"I've got my teeth into him, and I'm not going to let go."
"Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget – and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be."
"There is no such thing as society, there is a living tapestry of men and women and the beauty of that tapestry, and the quality of our lives, will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and to turn round and help, by our own efforts, those who are unfortunate. There's no such thing as entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation"
"Advisers advise, and ministers decide."
"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."
"The Third World is very much like the First World - just poorer: what works for the West will work for the rest as well."
"I will not stagger from expedient to expedient."
"You can't buck the market."
"I am not one who, to quote an American author, believes that democracy and enterprise have finally won the battle of ideas - that we have therefore arrived at the end of history, and there is nothing left to fight for. That would be unutterably complacent, indeed foolish. There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within."
"We introduced the Community Charge. I still call it that. I like the Poles - I never had any intention of taxing them."