Margaret Thatcher Quotes

Britain cherishes her eccentrics and wisely holds that the function of government is to build a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.

If people cannot limit government they will not for long be free.

Some members of Congress will claim that the federal government needs the power to monitor Americans in order to allow the government to operate more efficiently. I would remind my colleagues that, in a constitutional republic, the people are never asked to sacrifice their liberties to make the jobs of government officials easier.

What is the purpose of the government? When you examine most political debates, you usually find that question at the bedrock. What makes a government good? What makes one effective? What is government supposed to do, and what shouldn’t it do? The reason we disagree so much about politics is often because we hold different theories about what the purpose of government is.

Good government only happens when the people working in it do their jobs, and do them well.

The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Government is not the enemy. Government is simply a tool that can be used wisely or unwisely.

The question today is not whether the government is too small or too small, but whether or not it works

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.

The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.

A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Government should do a few things, and do them right

We've gone astray from first principles. We've lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we've accomplished. Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

Civil government is an ordinance of God, to conserve the civil peace of a people, so far as concerns their bodies and goods.

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.

I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.

Ideal government would be a very boring job - it would be a matter of organizing a lot of utilities and keeping the wires together and the power plant and all that kind of stuff. It's not a matter of telling people how to live, it's a matter of making it pleasant for them to live. Government should be in the position of distributing food, stuff like that.

The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people. Not dictate to the people what they are doing.

I think it's a scary thing for a lot of people to think of the government not being involved in their lives, particularly single women.

In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.

Liberty is always freedom from the government.

I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family -- whether it's from an intruder, or whether it's from a government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.