Margaret Thatcher Quotes

So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.

American presidents always avoid shaking hands with brutal dictators, except when it's advantageous to do so.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

No politician has ever yet been able to rule his country, nor has any country ever yet been able to face the world, upon the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.

Today's appeasers are worse than Neville Chamberlain: Chamberlain didn't have himself as an example

Important is not what is right, but what wins.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

When Mr. Obama trum­peted the “au­dac­ity of hope,” he for­sook the first rule of state-craft: It is bet­ter (and cheaper) to man the lines than to re­turn. Be­ing there de­ters; pulling out sug­gests in­dif­fer­ence, if not an in­vi­ta­tion to ri­vals. “Lead­ing from be­hind” may work with graz­ing sheep. It does not in wolf coun­try.

Bad principles are not good substitutes for no principles. For to eight years of bad principles may make no principles look pretty good.

If Trump's talking to Putin can help end the bloodshed in Ukraine or Syria, it would appear to be at least as ethical an act as pulpiteering about our moral superiority on the Sunday talk shows.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.

There’s no more morality in world affairs, fundamentally, than there was at the time of Genghis Khan.

Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.

I'm cheering for America as always. Our interest ought to come first and to the extent that making temporary alliances with other countries serve our interests, I met in favor of that. Making sweeping moral claims comparing people to Hitler advances the ball not one that blinds us to reality.

Power is neither good nor evil.

I have a certain admiration for Vladimir Putin because he doesn't allow decisions to be forced upon him by other countries. I think he focuses first and foremost on what is good for Russia and the Russians. As such, I have the same respect for Putin that I do for Ms. Merkel.

To equate Vladimir Putin and the United States of America, as Donald Trump was asked, you know, I guess it was Bill O'Reilly who said, "But Putin is a killer." And he basically said, "So are we." That moral equivalency is a contradiction of everything the United States has ever stood for in the 20th and 21st century.

The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil.

In the worst of times the best among us never lose their moral compass, and that is how they emerge relatively unscathed.

I've got a great sense of where I want to lead and I'm comfortable with why I'm running. And, you know, the call on that speech was, beware. This is going to be a tough campaign.

IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.

We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good.

Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.

Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?