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.“

“People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.”

“When you stop selecting by ability you have to select according to some other inevitably less satisfactory criterion.”

“There is nothing new or unusual about the Tory commitment to protect the environment. The last thing we want is to leave environmental debts for our children to clear up…It's we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the Earth—we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come. The core of Tory philosophy and for the case for protecting the environment are the same. No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease. This Government intends to meet the terms of that lease in full.”

“Madame Chairman, I presume this is to sweep Britain clean of socialism”

“I don't think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.”

“No, I'm not a feminist… I think they've become too strident. I think they have done great damage to the cause of women by making us out to be something we are not. Each person is different. Each has their own talents and abilities, and these are the things you want to draw and bring out. You don't say: “I must get on because I'm a woman, or that I must get on because I'm a man”. You should say that you should get on because you have the combination of talents which are right for the job. The moment you exaggerate the question, you defeat your case.”

“But freedom without law is freedom only for the strong at the expense of the weak. Freedom without law is therefore no freedom, but rather anarchy or tyranny. Law is the bond of all civil society. We are not asking a favour of a man when we ask him to obey the law. Obedience of the rule of law is necessary for the continuance of liberty itself. Doubtless you will point out that laws have not always been just—indeed they have been very unjust. In South Africa that certainly has been the case. Thankfully, that is now being remedied. And alongside that, democracy has yet to be achieved.”

“The right hon. Gentleman [Neil Kinnock] leads a party which claims to support democracy but repudiates those miners who have voted democratically to remain at work and have done so in accordance with their union procedures. He leads a party which condemns violence in general but supports the mass picketing which inevitably ends in violence. He leads a party which has allied itself to the wreckers against the workers. The forces to which the right hon. Gentleman has lent his voice and support have no more love for parliamentary democracy than for the jobs and homes of those who oppose them. Sooner or later, when he has ceased to be of value to their purpose, they will turn on him, just as surely as they have turned on the police, on the steel workers, and on working miners and their families. There is only one word to describe the policy of the right hon. Gentleman when faced with threats, whether from home or abroad, and that word is appeasement. He will live to regret it. It is no policy for Britain.”

“What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.”

“It would seem that dead hunger strikers, who have extinguished their own lives, are of more use to PIRA than living members. Such is their calculated cynicism. This Government is not prepared to legitimise their cause by word or by deed. And we should be clear what that cause is. It is a dictatorship by force and by fear in Northern Ireland, and in the Republic. These men deny democracy everywhere; they seek power for themselves. Some people argue that the Government could make the problem go away. We can of course maintain and improve an already humane prison regime. But there is no point in pretending that this is what the PIRA want. They have remained inflexible and intransigent in the face of all that we have done because what they want is special treatment, treatment different from that received by other prisoners. They want their violence justified. It isn't, and it will not be.”

“We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag. We fought with the support of so many throughout the world: the Security Council, the Commonwealth, the European Community, and the United States. Yet we also fought alone – for we fought for our own sovereign territory.”

“Patched-up diplomatic solutions designed to answer the needs of the moment rarely last, and as they unravel they can actually make things worse.”

“Let me make one point about the hunger strike in the Maze prison. I want this to be utterly clear. There can be no political justification for murder or any other crime. The Government will never concede political status to the hunger strikers, or to any others convicted of criminal offences in the Province.”

“The West as a whole in the early 1990s became obsessed with a 'peace dividend' that would be spent over and over again on any number of soft-hearted and sometimes soft-headed causes. Politicians forgot that the only real peace dividend is peace.”

“We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.”

“We will not take money in taxes from those who work hard and pay it out to those who don't. We are trying to roll back the tide of Socialism. We must get ‘stuck in’ and sort out our problems in our traditional British way instead of asking the Government to intervene every time. Intervening means taking from people who work jolly hard and just manage to live within their means and make a profit, money in extra tax to pay for those who don't.”

“I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.”

“We've beaten the Germans twice and now they're back!”

“Iraq has violated and taken over the territory of a country which is a full member of the United Nations. That is totally unacceptable and if it were allowed to endure then there would be many other small countries that could never feel safe…The fundamental question is this: whether the nations of the world have the collective will effectively to see that Security Council Resolution is upheld, whether they have the collective will effectively to do anything which the Security Council further agrees to see that Iraq withdraws and that the government of Kuwait is restored to Kuwait.”

“The point of having nuclear weapons is to deter a war of any kind. They have succeeded in doing so for the past 37 years. To be an effective deterrent a potential aggressor must believe that under certain circumstances such weapons will be used.”

“At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist gangs within our borders, and the terrorist states which finance and arm them. At the other are the Hard Left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the law.”

“If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.”

“The main contribution one can make as a student to one's country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively.”

“I believe that the royal family are a focus of patriotism, of loyalty, of affection and of esteem. That is a rare combination, and we should value it highly.”

“Let me give you my vision. A man's right to work as he will to spend what he earns to own property to have the State as servant and not as master these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.”

“(The Community Charge is) the flagship of the Thatcher fleet.”

“Don't be scared of the high language of economists and Cabinet ministers, but think of politics at our own household level. After all, women live in contact with food supplies, housing shortages, and the ever-decreasing opportunities for children, and we must therefore face up to the position, remembering that as more power is taken away from the people, so there is less responsibility for us to assume.”

“I have made it quite clear – and so did Mr Prior when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – that a unified Ireland was one solution. That is out. A second solution was confederation of two states. That is out. A third solution was joint authority. That is out. That is a derogation from sovereignty.”

“I am not sure what is meant by those who say that the Party should return to something called "One Nation Conservatism". As far as I can tell by their views on European federalism, such people's creed would be better described as "No Nation Conservatism".”