There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.

Margaret Thatcher made this remark in an interview during her premiership, at a moment when her government was pursuing market-oriented reforms and emphasizing personal responsibility over state provision. The line is most closely associated with her comments to Woman’s Own magazine in 1987, where she argued that social problems cannot be solved by invoking an abstract “society,” but only through the actions and obligations of individuals, families, and voluntary institutions. The phrase quickly became a flashpoint in British political debate, cited by critics as emblematic of “Thatcherism” and by supporters as a call to civic self-reliance rather than dependence on government.

The quote asserts that collective outcomes are produced by concrete agents—people acting within families and communities—rather than by an impersonal entity called “society.” Thatcher’s point is not that social bonds are unreal, but that moral and practical responsibility cannot be outsourced to the state or to vague communal rhetoric. Government, in this view, is an instrument that operates only through citizens’ choices, work, and mutual obligations. The statement therefore functions as a critique of welfare-state assumptions and a defense of individual initiative, while also implicitly elevating the family and voluntary association as primary sites of care and duty.

1) “There is no such thing as society.”
2) “There is no such thing as ‘society.’ There are individual men and women and there are families.”
3) “No government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.”