Margaret Thatcher

1925–2013 · British Prime Minister, 1979–1990

Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s first woman Prime Minister and its longest-serving of the twentieth century, in office from 1979 to 1990. She was an unusually quotable politician, and an unusually well-archived one: the Margaret Thatcher Foundation holds transcripts of her speeches and interviews going back to the 1940s. That archive is the reason a Thatcher line with no traceable occasion stands out. The words that survive best in circulation are often not the words she used — they are the tidied-up version someone else wrote later.

Traced to source

6 quotes we’ve traced to Margaret Thatcher

“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman”

Verified

“There is no such thing as society”

Verified

“To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning”

Verified

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it”

Attributed

“Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly”

Disputed

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money”

Disputed

Not actually Margaret Thatcher

Often misattributed to Margaret Thatcher

Famous lines widely pinned on Margaret Thatcher that we’ve traced to someone else.

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

actually Brian Howard

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

actually Jesse Carr

“If my critics saw me walking over the River Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim”

actually Lyndon B. Johnson

“It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the egg”

actually Anonymous (African-American folk proverb)

“We only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always”

actually The Provisional IRA

Did they really say it?

Thought Margaret Thatcher said something else?

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