Thatcher did say it, and the occasion is well established: a telephone conversation with President George H. W. Bush on 26 August 1990, weeks after Iraq invaded Kuwait, when Bush was hesitating over the scale of the response. What is not established is the wording people quote. Wikipedia’s account of the Anglo-American relationship ↗ renders it “this is no time to go wobbly,” citing Bush and Scowcroft’s A World Transformed (p. 352) and Thatcher’s own The Downing Street Years (pp. 823–24). Its foreign-relations article ↗ gives “This was no time to go wobbly!” and the Gulf War article ↗ has her “urging Bush not to go wobbly.” None of the three opens with “Remember, George.”
“Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly” Right person, embellished words. "Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly." — Margaret Thatcher really did urge President George H. W. Bush not to go wobbly, in a telephone call on 26 August 1990 during the Kuwait crisis. But the documented renderings, in her memoir The Downing Street Years (1993) and in Bush and Scowcroft's A World Transformed (1998), run simply "this is no time to go wobbly." The "Remember, George" opening is not in the record. Traced by Quotle.info
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the themes of courage, leadership and power. Theme: "Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The phone call, and three renderings of it
Occasion
Bush–Thatcher telephone conversation, 26 August 1990
Setting
Three weeks after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait; Bush was weighing the scale of the US response.
Documented in
Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), pp. 823–24; Bush & Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), p. 352 — both cited by Wikipedia.
The disputed words
“Remember, George” — absent from every scholarly rendering found.
This is no time to go wobbly.
That is the form Wikipedia uses when citing the two memoirs directly. Both memoirs are lending-restricted scans that could not be opened in this run, so the sentence above is the encyclopaedia’s rendering of them rather than a reading of either page. The variation across three Wikipedia articles — “this is,” “This was,” “not to” — is itself the point: even careful secondary sources do not agree on the exact words.
Read the raw wikitext of the Wikiquote Margaret Thatcher page ↗. “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly” appears in the Disputed section, sourced only to an Associated Press story published 8 March 1991 — months after the call itself.
Wikiquote also records that Dick Cheney called the quotation “an old wives’ story” ↗ in a 2013 interview, and that PolitiFact reviewed the available source material and rated Cheney’s claim False. PolitiFact itself is blocked by this run’s network policy, so that verdict is reported here as Wikiquote records it, not as a page we read.
Tried to read the two memoirs directly. Both A World Transformed ↗ and Thatcher’s The Downing Street Years are on the Internet Archive as lending-restricted scans and returned an authorisation error, so their exact pages remain unverified here.
No rights status is asserted. The underlying remark was spoken in a private 1990 telephone call and reaches us only through later published accounts — a 1991 news report and two memoirs of 1993 and 1998, all firmly in copyright. There is no public-domain text here, and the exact wording quoted has no identified published source of its own.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What was added, and when
This is not a fake quotation. It is a real one that grew a stage direction — two words that turn a line from a phone call into a scene with a cast.
✕
The added words“Remember, George” Not in the record
Where the popular version is sourcedAssociated Press, 8 March 1991 Later news report
Wikiquote’s Disputed section ↗ traces the “Remember, George” wording to an AP story published more than six months after the conversation — a report of a remark, not a transcript of one.
✕
The denial that did not holdDick Cheney Rejected by fact-checkers
Cheney called the quotation “an old wives’ story” in 2013. Wikiquote records that PolitiFact reviewed the source material and rated that claim False — the substance of the remark stands, whatever the exact words were.
✓So: she said it, he was the one she said it to, and the crisis was real. If you are quoting her, quote the documented form ↗ — “this is no time to go wobbly” — and leave the stage direction out.
Context
Why this line mattered
Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. Thatcher happened to be in the United States at the time, and over the following weeks she pressed a hesitant Bush administration towards a firm response — reminding the President, as Wikipedia’s Gulf War article puts it, that appeasement in the 1930s had led to war, and that Saddam Hussein would otherwise have the Gulf and much of the world’s oil supply at his mercy.
The “wobbly” remark became the shorthand for that whole intervention: the moment a British Prime Minister is said to have stiffened an American President’s spine. It is a good story, and good stories get tightened. The version with “Remember, George” in front of it is the tightened one.
She said it. He was the one she said it to. The two words that make it a scene were added later.
What this run could not read
Three sources that bear directly on this quotation are blocked by the network policy in force for this run: the Margaret Thatcher Foundation archive (which holds the commentary page on the Bush–Thatcher call), PolitiFact’s fact-check of Cheney’s denial, and the Internet Archive’s wayback service. The two memoirs are on the Internet Archive but lending-restricted.
Everything asserted above therefore rests on sources that were read in full: the raw wikitext of Wikiquote’s Thatcher page and three Wikipedia articles that cite the memoirs by page number. Where a claim originates with PolitiFact or the AP, this page says so rather than implying it was checked at source.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. The Kuwait crisis caught her at the very end of that run — she was out of office by November 1990, and the Gulf War began in January 1991 under John Major. Her intervention with Bush in August 1990 is among the most cited moments of the Anglo-American relationship, which is exactly the kind of story that acquires a better script over time. “Don’t go wobbly” is hers. The stage direction in front of it is not.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this page
Remark made in a Bush–Thatcher telephone conversation, 26 August 1990, during the Kuwait crisis. Documented accounts: Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 823–24; George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 352 — both as cited by Wikipedia, which renders the remark “this is no time to go wobbly.” The popular “Remember, George” opening appears in none of these renderings.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly’?” Last verified 20 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/remember-george-this-is-no-time-to-go-wobbly/