Margaret Thatcher Quotes

'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government.

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law.

Void of freedom, what would virtue be?

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion.

This country will never sacrifice humanity in order to carry out any policy.

The government may be made up of clever, sensible people. But if they do not believe in basic human values, the more clever or shrewd they are the greater the tragedy they will create.

Individual freedoms are the primary engine by which the pursuit of happiness can be maximally instantiated.

We shouldn't be fearful of freedom, we shouldn't be fearful of individual liberty.

Without Virtue there can be no liberty

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

. . . Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed . . . so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.

That great political idea, sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men to treasure the liberties of others as their own and to defend them for the love of justice and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of what is great and good in the progress of the last two hundred years.

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

I recognize that in some cases it's more important to have freedom and justice than to have peace.

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.

There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty.

It is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most for.

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.