Margaret Thatcher

Well, you know, the opinion polls can be very deceptive indeed. The only real opinion poll are election polls.

Socialists say "publicly owned". What they mean is "State controlled".

I simply do not understand how Ken Clarke could lead today's Conservative Party to anything other than disaster.

I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.

Some Socialists seem to believe that people should just be numbers. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unalike. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise.

Idleness, selfishness, fecklessness, envy, & irresponsibility are vices upon which socialism in any form flourishes & which it in turn encourages. But its devilishly clever tactic is to play up to all these human failings, while making those who practise them feel good about it.

Never forget that the Marxist societies call themselves, and indeed are, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some of the aims of socialism, are the aims of a Marxist society, and they result in the subjugation of the rights of people to political theory.

Free enterprise has enabled the creative and the acquisitive urges of man to be given expression in a way which benefits all members of society. Let free enterprise fight back now, not for itself, but for all those who believe in freedom.

I shall never stop fighting. I mean this country to survive, to prosper and to be free... I haven't fought the destructive forces of socialism for more than twenty years in order to stop now, when the critical phase of the struggle is upon us.

Prosperity will not come by inventing more and more lavish public expenditure programmes. You do not grow richer by ordering another cheque-book from the Bank. No nation ever grew more prosperous by taxing its citizens beyond their capacity to pay.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

My friends, every generation has to fight anew the battle for liberty. In my generation, Nazism and then Communism were the enemy, and they very nearly prevailed. Then, as now, strong arms and stout hearts were called upon to sustain the struggle for truth and right.

Socialism was a patent failure which should be cast onto the trash heap of history.

The Britain I want is a land where a man can take a job he is capable of doing, and work for whom he chooses. Not a land where there is no employer but The State.

We must never forget that it is in fact capitalism which has the moral quality in society. Not socialism, which is the elevation of the power of the government over the people.

What Britain needs is an iron lady.

Only truthful ideas, ideas that are in tune with the essential dignity and rights of man, can prevail across the years. The ruins of Marxist communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union testify most eloquently to that.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

The events of September 11 are a terrible reminder that freedom demands eternal vigilance. And for too long we have not been vigilant. We have harboured those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us.

Privatisation shrinks the power of the state and free enterprise enlarges the power of the people.