Margaret Thatcher Quotes

Talking about freedom, about ethical issues, about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might prefer to ignore, such as whether their conduct is ethical. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may simply close their minds to it. It does not follow that we ought to stop talking about these things.

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

If we cannot count on ourselves to do the right thing how can we count on anyone or anything else? Self-government won't work without self-discipline.

If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capcity to govern someone else.

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom.

If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.

A man is accountable to no person for his doings.

I know what you're going to say! 'They are men, and men should be free.' A free man is dangerous to himself and everyone else. Freedom should be left to those who can put it to good use.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Only free people have an incentive to be virtuous. Only people who bear the consequences of their own acts will care about those consequences and try to learn from their mistakes.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

I'm really only responsible for my own actions.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to well, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to do.

When one has genuinely chosen a course for oneself it cannot be possible to hold another responsible for it.

Coach Boeheim, he's really not like a lot of coaches. We don't do shoot-arounds, we don't have curfews. So I think he teaches you how to be a man and how to be responsible for yourself.

With freedom goes responsibility, a responsibility that can only be met by the individual himself.

Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.

The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.

A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.