Margaret Thatcher

"Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose."

"I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it."

"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end."

"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near."

"I like Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business together."

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

"I owe nothing to Women's Lib."

"I've got a woman's ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it."

"If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman."

"If... many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made."

"It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake."

"It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs."

"One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex."

"Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth."

"People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top."

"Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan."

"Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

"The battle for women's rights has been largely won."

"There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it."

"There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families."

"To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best."

"What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose."