Gentlemen, I have spent the night thinking about this Peruvian (peace) initiative and I have to tell you that if it is your decision to accept then you will have to find another Prime Minister.

In those days one advantage of being a woman was that there was a basic courtesy towards us on which we could draw - something which today's feminists have largely dissipated.

I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

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.

Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family, and the school.

I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am.

I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.