http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106046


"This is part of our capital-owning democracy. For capitalism is the story of how the privileges of the few became the daily necessities of the many. [clapping] Communism is the story of how the privileges of the few were kept by the political few and never transferred to the many. [clapping]"

"All these things are important aspects of wider ownership. When you have something of your own, you take care of it—you do it yourself in the garden or in the house. As a property owner you respect the rights of others, and the rule of law which upholds them. [clapping] As a property owner you understand your own responsibility and you respect the responsibilities and duties of others. As a worker shareholder you take an interest in selling more goods and looking after the customers."

"But, Mr President, our vision is about much more than ownership and material things. We seek a world in which individuals can aspire to their own particular greatness. Where the quality of life is improved by the changed attitudes that prosperity and ownership can bring.[fo 10]"

"But now prosperity and having a stake in the future are not materialistic: because prosperity and a stake are bed rocks for improving the quality of life. And I get sometimes a little concerned when I hear people dispising them as 'materialism'. But you know, you have got to provide money to look after ... the old, the sick and the disabled in a more generous way. And prosperity and a stake in future are what enables us to protect the environment, to encourage the arts, to promote the sciences. All are part of our vision. They are the means through which we give voluntarily to those great charitable causes, which are so much a feature of our national life; they are the means to help others in the Third World whose plight is flashed so vividly onto our television screens. And didn't our people give so generously and wonderfully in the way in which it has become our custom to give. They are the means by which we exercise choice; and choice is the essence of liberty.

That is our vision. That is the framework which we believe government must create, and then that is the way in which we believe people will use their own talents, their own opportunities to develop, as free people. [clapping] "

"Mr President, if the last war taught us anything it taught us that appeasement never makes for peace. [clapping] On th contrary, it is weakness, not strength, that tempts th tyrants. Only with a defence that is strong, and known to be strong, can we in the West safely conduct a dialogue with the Soviet Union. Only with a defence that is strong, and known to be strong, can we hope to negotiate balanced and verifiable treaties that reduce weapons on both sides.

What conceivable incentive would there be for the Soviet Union to enter into agreements with us to limit arms if we were already busily disarming on our own? And to believe that the Soviets would follow Britain's example and embrace nuclear disarmament because Britain had pointed the way is to occupy the commanding heights of naivety. [clapping] Yet that is Labour's defence policy"