Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013

The debt the free peoples of Europe owe to [the United States], generous with its bounty, willing to share its strength, seeking to protect the week, is incalculable. We thank and salute you! ...

We do not aim at domination, at hegemony, in any part of the world. Even against those who oppose and who would destroy our ideas, we plot no aggression. Of course, we are ready to fight the battle of ideas with all the vigour at our command, but we do not try to impose our system on others. We do not believe that force should be the final arbiter in human affairs. We threaten no-one. Indeed, the Alliance has given a solemn assurance to the world—none of our weapons will be used except in response to attack...

Distinguished Members of Congress, our two countries have a common heritage as well as a common language. It is no mere figure of speech to say that many of your most enduring traditions—representative government, habeas corpus, trial by jury, a system of constitutional checks and balances—stem from our own small islands. But they are as much your lawful inheritance as ours. You did not borrow these traditions—you took them with you, because they were already your own.

Human progress is not automatic. Civilisation has its ebbs and flows, but if we look at the history of the last five hundred years, whether in the field of art, science, technology, religious tolerance or in the practise of politics, the conscious inspiration of it all has been the belief and practise of freedom under law; freedom disciplined by morality, under the law perceived to be just.

 -- Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to a joint session of the United States Congress, February 20, 1985.

Thank you, madam, for your service to humanity's quest for freedom and liberty. The world in which my children are being raised is better for your iron presence having been such a stalwart feature of much of my growing up. As with the Lion who came before you at Downing Street, you will be greatly missed for the rest of days.

Defeat—I do not recognise the meaning of the word!

-- during the Falklands crisis, 1982