Quotes from Theresa May


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The universities have got a job here as well in making sure that people actually understand that we're open for university students coming into the U.K. There's a job here not just for the government, I think there's a job for the universities as well to make sure that people know that we are open.


You don't think about it at the time, but there are certain responsibilities that come with being the vicar's daughter. You're supposed to behave in a particular way. I shouldn't say it, but I probably was Goody Two Shoes.


Well can I just make a point about the numbers because people talk a lot about police numbers as if police numbers are the holy grail. But actually what matters is what those police are doing. It's about how those police are deployed.


I was looking at a photograph of the 1997 election campaign yesterday, and I thought: 'My God. Did I really have that hairstyle? And that Tory blue suit?'


A lot of men in politics suddenly woke up to the issue of women in politics when they realised: hey, there are votes in this!


The U.K. needs a system for family migration underpinned by three simple principles. One: that those who come here should do so on the basis of a genuine relationship. Two: that migrants should be able to pay their way. And three: that they are able to integrate into British society.


It is quite widely known that I like shoes. This is not something that defines me as either a woman or a politician, but it has come to define me in the eyes of the newspapers. I wore a pair of leopard-print kitten heels to a Conservative Party Conference a few years ago and the papers have continued to focus on my feet ever since.


I'm not willing to risk more terrorist plots succeeding and more paedophiles going free.


There is nothing inevitable about crime and there is nothing inevitable about anti-social behaviour.


I will be ruthless in cutting out waste, streamlining structures and improving efficiency.


I'm not sure I should reveal the sources of my clothes.


In tough times, everyone has to take their share of the pain.


People have to make journeys, what we want is people to have alternatives in public transport so that they can make a choice about the sort of way in which they're going to travel.


On gay adoption I have changed my mind.


Flexible working is not just for women with children. It is necessary at the other end of the scale. If people can move into part-time work, instead of retirement, then that will be a huge help. If people can fit their work around caring responsibilities for the elderly, the disabled, then again that's very positive.


Dealing with a simple burglary can require 1,000 process steps and 70 forms to be completed as a case goes through the Criminal Justice System. That can't be right.


Anti-social behaviour still blights lives, wrecks communities and provides a pathway to criminality.


The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration.


You can't solve a problem as complex as inequality in one legal clause.


I'd personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have had some problems with it.