Politics and Power

Experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform.

Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;

No! No! No!

It is exciting to have a real crisis on your hands, when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only this to say. ‘You turn if you want; the lady’s not for turning.’

I stand before you tonight in my red chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved … the Iron Lady of the Western World! Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes—if that is how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life.

No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.

That, Sire, is a question of dates.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

It is the folly of too many, to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.

I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his brinkmanship—the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.

The young man who asks you to set him one heart-beat from the Presidency of the United States.

In America any boy may become President and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes!

Politics in the middle of things that concern the imagination are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert.

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

I met Murder on the way—

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.