Thatcher's Thoughts from a Life in Politics

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — who died Monday from a stroke at age 87 — retired from public engagements in 2002 following a series of small strokes, and was only occasionally seen in public since then.

Here are memorable quotes from her public life.

__

"There are dangers in consensus: it could be an attempt to satisfy people holding no particular views about anything. ... No great party can survive except on the basis of firm beliefs about what it wants to do." -- Oct. 10, 1968, Conservative Party conference.

__

"Ladies and gentlemen, 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 defense of values of freedoms fundamental to our way of life." Jan. 31, 1976.

__

"You turn if you want to; the lady's not for turning." -- Conservative Party Conference, Oct. 10, 1980.

__

"When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands." -- May 14, 1982, commenting on the Falkland Islands war.

__

"We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag. We fought with the support of so many throughout the world. ... Yet we also fought alone." -- July 3, 1982, on the Falkland Islands war.

__

"I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am." July 21, 1983, speech to British Jewish Community.

__

"There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter -- there is no charm or bar against it." -- July 19, 1984, during the coal miners' strike.

__

"We can do business together." Dec. 17, 1984, speaking of Mikhail Gorbachev.

__

"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well." Jan. 6, 1986, television interview.

__

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." Oct. 31, 1987, magazine interview.

__

"We are a grandmother." -- March 3, 1989, announcing the birth of her first grandchild.

__

"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and you would achieve nothing." -- May 3, 1989, commenting on her 10th anniversary as prime minister.

__

"I am not immortal, but I've got a lot left in me yet." -- Sept. 9, 1990.

__

"I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on (Ronald Reagan's) words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: 'Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.' Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust." — Eulogy at funeral of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, June 11, 2004