Hilary Mantel Quotes

I'm still a fiscal conservative, and I'm inclined to pay down debt.

I'm a very conservative businessman. I don't work on credit. My father was the guy who taught me how to think straight, not to delude myself and think I was larger than I was.

Until I got older, I never dreamed of what a demanding responsibility it is to keep food in the pantry, to keep clothing neat and presentable, to buy all that is needed to keep a home running.

May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.

I'm quoting Margaret Thatcher. I quote her frequently.

Women tend to vote the economic interests of their families and to speak out on family economic issues. For men, there's often much more focus on the idea of personal failure: "If I'm not winning this great economic game, it must be my fault."

Vermont is the only place in America where I ever hear thrift spoken of with respect.

Avarice is more directly opposed to thrift than generosity is.

Gordon Gekko was right: greed is good. Because, the potty-trained Republicans have now stepped forward - like the Koch brothers - to say, 'You know what? You yokels stop talking about defaulting on the debt, because I'm going to lose a fortune!'

My Prime Minister regards the economy as our highest priority and forgets that economics and ecology are derived from the same Greek word, oikos, meaning household or domain. Ecology is the study of home, while economics is its management. Ecologists try to define the conditions and principles that enable a species to survive and flourish. Yet in elevating the economy above those principles, we seem to think we are immune to the laws of nature. We have to put the ‘eco’ back into economics.

When the Republican Party is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism then clearly I would argue that we've lost our way.

To a Brit of my generation, one of the most objectionable things about [Margaret] Thatcher is her falsity. She is a total construct. For one thing, she had a made-over accent.

Any fool can waste, any fool can muddle, but it takes something of a man to save, and the more he saves the more of a man does it make of him.

When we save, everybody in the household is just suffering. By having the coin in a visible way, when you scratch, you can say the person that is in charge of the making money for the family is doing the right thing.

If we could manage our own finances the way the Congress does the nation's, we'd all be living in high cotton and eating high on the hog.

Waste begets self-will; thrift begets meanness: but better be mean than self-willed.

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.

The story of Joseph in Egypt and of the seven fat and the seven lean years has passed into the homely wisdom of the ages; but our economic thinking seems to have lost contact with so simple and basic approach to prudent management of a nations welfare.

[Margaret Thatcher] scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper.

I know what I'm talking about and I've never been over budget, in 70 films.

We deny that it is fun to be saving. It is fun to be prodigal. Go to the butterfly, thou parsimonious sluggard; consider her ways and get wise.

There is talk ... of our constructing Dnieprostroy through our own means. The means needed are great, several hundred millions. Let us not get into the position of the peasant who, after accumulating a nest-egg, instead of repairing his plough and renewing his equipment, buys a gramophone and goes bankrupt.

It is quite clear that history will record that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister this country has had since Churchill.

Good Conservatives always pay their bills. And on time. Not like the Socialists who run up other people's bills.