There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters is a 2008 biographical account of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher written by American author Claire Berlinski.
The title is a reference to Margaret Thatcher's fondness for the slogan "There is no alternative" which she used to describe her belief that despite capitalism's problems, "there is no alternative" to it as an economic system, and that neoliberalism must push back against socialism. The phrase became something of a rallying cry of arguments in favor of free markets, free trade, and capitalist globalization, with Thatcher and her followers believing that it is the only way which modern societies can advance themselves.
The primary focus of the biography is a favorable account of the Thatcher years, arguing that much like Thatcher's ideology, there was no alternative after the malaise of the 1970s but to embrace a leader like Thatcher. Berlinski argues that much of how the world is currently organized today is as a result of her, and because of this she matters to modern society even today.
Read more about There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters: Overview, Critical Reception
Famous quotes containing the words there is no, there is, thatcher and/or matters:
“If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another—and always into a better set—things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean—there is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“There, there is only order and beauty,
Luxury, quietness, and pleasure.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions—he had money as well.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)