Margaret Thatcher Quotes

[Dan Goncharoff]

I would opt for her Sep 15, 1976 speech to Australian Institute of
Directors lunch:

"It is obvious that if policies are formulated only on the basis of what
can be seen immediately and ignore what should be foreseen in the
future, the ‘iceberg effect’ will become the Titanic effect!

And who suffers? We all do if we refuse to face reality until it comes
face to face with us. Then there is no alternative."

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103099

This pre-dates the more famous Press Conference for American
correspondents in London on June 25, 1980:
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=104389

"If you're trying, as I said in the House yesterday to squeeze out
inflation, there's no way of doing it without some painful results. How
do you justify it? The fact that if you don't squeeze it out it will
accelerate and you will get "suitcase money". You understand what I mean
by "suitcase money". That's why you have to do it. So it is the lesser
of two evils. And the fact is that if you just go on printing more
money, you'll finish up with everyone pricing themselves out of the
market and enormous unemployment, a flight from money into goods and
total chaos. So that's why you have to do it. It does take a time to
work through. As you know, we're still suffering from the ejection of
the extra money coming out of the election. It takes about fifteen
months to work through and then you have to squeeze. And in the end it
does work to the real economy. So in a sense we do have to do it.
Because there really is no alternative.

And the November 10, 1980, Speech at Lord Mayor’s Banquet:

"Moreover, after two years in which real earnings have gone up sharply
while output has actually dropped, we now have no alternative but to
accept a reduction in the country's standard of living if investment and
employment are to recover."

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=104442

Hope this helps
DanG

On 6/11/2010 9:24 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> 3.  The Cat's Pyjamas: The Penguin Book of Cliches states, "The key quote of the 1980s must be There is no alternative.  It was used by Margaret Thatcher on several occasions in the 1980s about her economic policies."  Can anyone identify the earliest or best-known example of Thatcher using this?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org