Маргарет Тэтчер цитаты

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„Единственный способ взобраться на вершину лестницы – преодолевать ступеньку за ступенькой, по одной за раз. И в процессе этого подъема Вы внезапно обнаружите у себя все необходимые качества, навыки и умения, нужные для достижения успеха, которыми Вы, вроде бы, никогда не обладали.“

„Дом должен быть центром, но не границей мира женщины.“

„Я исключительно терпелива, если в конечном итоге всё выйдет по-моему.“

„Делать всё с открытым сердцем — не самая хорошая идея. Сердце должно оставаться закрытым, так оно лучше функционирует.“

„Если женщина проявляет характер, про нее говорят «вредная баба». Если характер проявляет мужчина, про него говорят: «Он хороший парень».“

„Если вы хотите что-либо услышать, спросите мужчину. Если вы хотите что-либо сделать, попросите женщину.“

„Такой вещи, как общество, не существует. Есть отдельные мужчины, отдельные женщины, и есть семьи.“

„Сегодня у женщин есть много возможностей проявить себя: некоторые из нас даже управляют странами. Но, говоря по чести, нам больше идёт ридикюль, чем штык.“

„Богатство страны не обязательно строится на собственных природных ресурсах, оно достижимо даже при их полном отсутствии. Самым главным ресурсом является человек. Государству лишь нужно создать основу для расцвета таланта людей.“

„Составляя свое впечатление о человеке за первые десять секунд, я очень редко меняю его.“

„Инженер — это человек, который может объяснить, как работает то или иное устройство, но не может объяснить, почему оно не работает.“

„По оценкам мирового сообщества экономически целесообразно проживание на территории России 15 млн. человек.“

„Страсть к победе пылает в каждом из нас. Воля к победе — вопрос тренировки. Способ победы — вопрос чести.“

„Он так молчит, что хочется раздеться.“

„Если ты настроена только на то, чтобы кому-то нравиться, ты должна быть готова идти на компромисс по любому поводу в любое время — и ты никогда ничего не достигнешь.“

„Все лезут на Эверест для себя, но каждый поднимает над вершиной флаг своей страны.“

„Есть только один способ быть руководителем: это когда руководитель идет в добровольное рабство к руководимым, а не наоборот. Если же в его поведении появляется пусть даже одна сотая претензий на какое-либо преимущество перед ними или привилегии, то рано или поздно эти 0,01 вырастают в подавление, деспотию и тиранию.“

„90% наших забот касается того, что никогда не случится.“

„Не скажу, чтобы мне повезло. Просто я заслужила это.“

„Без экономической свободы никакой другой свободы быть не может.“

„Нужно хорошо изучить своего врага, тогда однажды можно превратить его в друга.“

„Чтобы выиграть сражение, его иногда приходится давать дважды.“

„Если те, кто меня критикует, увидели бы, как я шагаю по волнам Темзы, они сказали бы: это только потому, что она не умеет плавать.“

„Вовсе не обязательно соглашаться с собеседником, чтобы найти с ним общий язык.“

„Европа была создана историей. Америка – философией.“

„Не следует беззастенчиво лгать; но иногда необходима уклончивость.“

„Невозможно понять всех, если не прислушаться к каждому.“

„Европейский союз принципиально не может быть «демократической» структурой: попытки достичь этой иллюзорной цели на деле ведут к дальнейшему ущемлению бедных стран…“

„Нет ни малейшего смысла быть жалкой мягкой субстанцией в кресле. Разве не так?“

„Быть сильной — это как быть леди. Если надо говорить об этом, значит ты такой не являешься.“

„Все мужчины слабы, а слабее всех джентльмены.“

„Не важно, сколько болтают мои министры, лишь бы они делали то, что я говорю.“

„Сам черт не разберет, отчего у нас быстрее подвигаются те, которые идут назад.“

„Никто бы и не помнил о «добром самаритянине», если бы у него были только благие намерения. У него также были и деньги.“

„Всем в своей жизни я обязана моему отцу, и это необычайно интересно, так как те вещи, которые я усвоила в маленьком городке, в очень скромной семье, – это именно те вещи, которые, как мне кажется, помогли победить на выборах.“

„Если вы не хотите ехать в этом поезде, то не важно, быстро он идет или медленно.“

„Персональным нападкам на меня только радуюсь. Значит, других политических аргументов у противника уже не осталось.“

„Это потрясающе — иметь на руках реальный кризис, после того как половина твоей политической жизни ушла на всякие скучные вещи вроде охраны среды!“

„Я останусь до тех пор, пока не устану. А пока Британия во мне нуждается, я никогда не устану.“

„Вежливость сегодня ценится все дороже, нахальство вообще не имеет цены.“

„Конечно, банальности существуют. Они существуют просто потому, что отражают правду.“

„Лечить застарелые британские болезни социализмом — это как лечить лейкемию пиявками.“

„Изобретательность американцев при строительстве многих зданий – их линии, детали,
материалы, формы, сама их общая структура – завораживает меня.“

“The freedom of peoples depends fundamentally on the rule of law, a fair legal system. The place to have trials or accusations is a court of law, the Common Law that has come right up from Magna Carta, which has come right up through the British courts – a court of law is the place where you deal with these matters. If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it.”

“I set out to destroy socialism because I felt it was at odds with the character of the people. We were the first country in the world to roll back the frontiers of socialism, then roll forward the frontiers of freedom. We reclaimed our heritage; we are renewing it and carrying it forward.”

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

“Each demand for security, whether of employment, income or social position, implied the exclusion from such benefits of those outside the particular privileged group - and would generate demands for countervailing privileges from the excluded groups. Eventually, in such a situation every will lose.”

“May I make one point absolutely clear; the time we went there was a hunger strike on in the Maze, no-one has asked me, no-one in official authority or in high places has ever asked me to give political status to people who've been convicted of terrible crimes like murder, wounding, maming, causing explosions. That used to be asked. I think one of the reasons why we're not asked now is because we have got over our viewpoint and because everyone knows that this government will not budge on things which it regards as vital. There is no such thing as political murder. There is murder. There is no such things as causing explosions for political purposes and risking the lives of innocent men women and children. It is causing explosion, it is a crime, and they know that neither I, nor any member of my government will be moved on this. And we won through on that. And everyone knows it.”

“If we do not keep alive the flame of freedom that flame will go out, and every noble ideal will die with it. It is not by force of weapons but by force of ideas that we seek to spread liberty to the world' s oppressed. It is not only ideals, but conscience that impels us to do so. Is there conscience in the Kremlin? Do they ever ask themselves what is the purpose of life? What is it all for? Does the way they handled the Korean airliner atrocity suggest that they ever considered such questions? No. Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil. To them it is the system that counts, and all men must conform.”

“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

“The greatest division this nation has ever seen were the conflicts of trade unions towards the end of a Labour Government…That trade union movement…used their power against their members. They made them come out on strike when they didn't want to. They loved secondary picketing. They went and demonstrated outside companies where there was no dispute whatsoever, and sometimes closed them down. They were acting as they were later in the coal strike, before my whole trade union laws were through of this Government. They were out to use their power to hold the nation to ransom, to stop power from getting to the whole of manufacturing industry to damage people's jobs, to stop power from getting to every house in the country, power, heat and light to every housewife, every child, every school, every pensioner. You want division; you want conflict; you want hatred. There it was. It was that which Thatcherism—if you call it that—tried to stop. Not by arrogance, but by giving power to the ordinary, decent, honourable, trade union member who didn’t want to go on strike. By giving power to him over the Scargills of this world.”

“Our sovereignty does not come from Brussels—it is ours by right and by heritage.”

“We could have stopped this, we could still do so… But for the most part, we in the west have actually given comfort to the aggressor.”

“1989 will be remembered for decades to come as the year when half the people of half our continent began to throw off their chains. The messages on our banners in 1979—freedom, opportunity, family, enterprise, ownership—are now inscribed on the banners in Leipzig, Warsaw, Budapest and even Moscow…In 1979, we knew that we were starting a British revolution; in fact, we were the pioneers of a world revolution.”

“Communism never sleeps, never changes its objectives, nor must we. Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. Then one day we might export a little to those peoples who have to live without it. Let no one be under any misunderstanding about the inflexible resolve of Her Majesty's Government to strengthen our defences and to play our full part in the defence of a free Europe.”

“It may be inverted snobbishness but I don't want old style, Old Etonian Tories of the old school to succeed me and go back to the old complacent, consensus ways. John Major is someone who has fought his way up from the bottom and is far more in tune with the skilled and ambitious and worthwhile working classes than Douglas Hurd is.”

“We now know that bin Laden's terrorists had been planning their outrages for years. The propagation of their mad, bad ideology – decency forbids calling it a religion – had been taking place before our eyes. We were just too blind to see it. In short, the world had never ceased to be dangerous. But the West had ceased to be vigilant. Surely that is the most important lesson of this tragedy, and we must learn it if our civilisation is to survive.”

“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.”

“Pennies don't fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.”

“Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop.”

“The interviewer Stina Dabrowski said to Thatcher: "So when people criticise you and say what it led to the period when you were prime minister was that the rich became richer and the poor and the became poorer." Thatcher replied "That is not correct. The poor also became less poor, because the benefits at the bottom for those who are genuinely poor do go up. Money spend on education goes up and on the Health Service goes up so that is not true. What happens you might get a bigger gap but you might start here creates a small gap particularly if you're paying top tax today - 83% on earnings and income and 98% on savings. Your gap goes up, it does go up, but the whole thing moves up the gap, you must give people incentive!”

“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”

“Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man.”

“My job is to stop Britain from going red.”

“I'm the world's greatest fan of your President [Ronald Reagan], as you know. I think he's done terrific things and I think that in his recent speech, the keynote that he struck, that America is a confident leader of the free world, is the right one and I'm absolutely delighted at the way in which confidence had returned to the United States.”

“In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world.”

“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands and now we have to fight the enemy within, which is much more difficult but just as dangerous to liberty.”

“People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. The hon. Gentleman is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That way one will never create the wealth for better social services. as we have. What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy.”

“We suffered a tragedy not one of us could have thought would happen in our country. And we picked ourselves up and sorted ourselves out as all good British people do, and I thought, let us stand together for we are British! They were trying to destroy the fundamental freedom that is the birth-right of every British citizen, freedom, justice and democracy.”

“To many of us it seems that there is precious little difference between the policies of the Communist Party and the policies of the Labour Party.”

“I fight on, I fight to win.”

“Those who use this countries great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others, especially to those who, like Mr Powell, spent their war years in distinguished service in the Forces.”