"...it is already clear that the policies that we have been pursuing have brought about a profound cultural change in this country. That, indeed, is what it is all about. For that cultural change is the only route to the economic success that we all wish to see, and which is no longer promise but reality. No longer do people accept that economic policy should be about regulating everyone's lives and imposing penal tax rates, in the illusion that that will benefit those on lower incomes. Instead, it is now widely recognised except on the Opposition Benches that one cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor and that there are enormous benefits in getting the state off people's backs, in transferring decision-making from the state to the people. And it is now abundantly clear that giving greater freedom and greater incentives has removed the shackles that have held back Britain for so many years and has liberated a great surge in enterprise."

“The successful sale of British Telecom...reveals a vast and untapped yearning among ordinary people for a direct stake in the ownership of British enterprise. Investment in shares has begun to take its place, with ownership of a home and either a bank or building society deposit, as a way for ordinary people to participate in enterprise and wealth creation. We are seeing the birth of people's capitalism.”

“Those who, in the nineteenth century, argued the dangers of a mass democracy in which a majority of the voters would have no stake in the country at all, had reason to be fearful. But the remedy is not to restrict the franchise to those who own property: it is to extend the ownership of property to the largest possible majority of those who have the vote. The widespread ownership of private property is crucial to the survival of freedom and democracy. It gives the citizen a vital sense of identification with the society of which he is a part. It gives him a stake in the future—and indeed, equally important, in the present. It creates a society with an inbuilt resistance to revolutionary change.”

“It is here that Britain's weakness lies. The plain fact is that labour costs per unit of output in British business and industry continue to rise faster than is consistent with low unemployment and faster than our principal competitors overseas. Productivity is, certainly rising quite rapidly, but pay is rising faster still. It is this—and not our alleged dependence on oil—that constitutes the Achilles' heel of the British economy.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that we have a choice between cutting tax and cutting unemployment, for the two go hand in hand. It is no accident that the two most successful economies in the world, both overall and specifically in terms of job creation—those of the United States and Japan—have the lowest level of tax as a proportion of GDP. Reductions in taxation motivate new businesses and improve incentives at work. They are a principal engine of the enterprise culture, on which our future prosperity and employment opportunities depend.”

“During the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, growth in manufacturing productivity in the United Kingdom was the lowest of all the seven major industrial countries in the world. During the 1980s, our annual rate of growth of output per head in manufacturing has been the highest of all the seven major industrial countries.”

“The Conservative Party has never believed that the business of government is the government of business.”