Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury quotes

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was a British statesman and three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A key figure in Victorian-era politics, he was noted for his conservative leadership and foreign policy expertise. He played a major role in shaping British imperial and domestic policy at the turn of the 20th century. Here are 142 of his quotes:

...the common sense of Christendom has always prescribed for national policy principles diametrically opposed to those that are laid down in the Sermon on the Mount.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

It is said,-and men seem to think that condemnation can go no further than such a censure-that they brought us within twenty-four hours of revolution...But is it in truth so great an evil, when the dearest interests and the most sincere convictions are at stake, to go within twenty-four hours of revolution?

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

I believe...all the enduring institutions which human societies have attained have been reached, not of the set design and forethought of some group of statesmen, but by that unbidden and unconscious convergence of many thoughts and wills in successive generations to which, as it obeys no single guiding hand, we may give the name of "drifting."

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Now if Conservative has any meaning at all, it means anti-Radical. The Radicals are the only inheritors of the revolutionary views which the Conservative party was set up to counteract; and the two can no more act together, if both are honest, than a weasel can act with a rat. Hostility to Radicalism, incessant, implacable hostility, is the essential definition of Conservatism. The fear that the Radicals my triumph is the only final cause that the Conservative party can plead for their own existence.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

The conflict which we have to fight is still a conflict of tariffs. In every country resolutions are being formed and plans are being worked out for limiting still further the intercourse of nations with each other and interposing new barriers of tariff... And as years go on we shall have to fight that battle. ... It is the world's conflict of the future.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

So long as we have government by party, the very notion of repose must be foreign to English politics. Agitation is, so to speak, endowed in this country. There is a standing machinery for producing it. There are rewards which can only be obtained by men who excite the public mind, and devise means of persuading one set of persons that they are deeply injured by another. The production of cries is encouraged by a heavy bounty. The invention and exasperation of controversies lead those who are successful in such arts to place, and honour, and power. Therefore, politicians will always select the most irritating cries, and will raise the most exasperating controversies the circumstances will permit.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

I earnestly hope that the House of Lords will always continue to justify your confidence; that it will conscientiously and firmly fulfil the duties for which I think it is eminently fitted, and which are to represent the permanent and enduring wishes of the nation as opposed to the casual impulses which some passing victory at the polls may in some circumstances have given to the decisions of the other House.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

...institutions like the House of Lords must die, like all other organic beings, when their time comes.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

If England is to remain supreme, she must be able to appeal to the coloured against the white, as well to the white against the coloured. It is therefore not merely as a matter of sentiment and of justice, but as a matter of safety, that we ought to try and lay the foundation of some feeling on the part of coloured races towards the crown other than the recollection of defeat and the sensation of subjection.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

...if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

In the supreme struggle of social order against anarchy, we cannot deny to the champions of civilised society the moral latitude which is by common consent accorded to armed men fighting for their country against a foreign foe.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

I have for so many years entertained a firm conviction that we were going to the dogs that I have got to be quite accustomed to the expectation.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Mr. Parnell said the other night, that Ireland is a "nation". Well, if a nation only means a certain number of individuals collected between certain latitudes and longitudes, I admit in that sense Ireland is a nation. But if there is anything further necessary- if to make a nation you require a past united history, traditions in which you can all join, achievements of which you all are proud, interests which you share in common, and sympathies which belong to all- then emphatically Ireland is not a nation; Ireland is two nations.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

...that shapeless, formless, fibreless mass of platitudes which in official cant is called "unsectarian religion."

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

I would have devoted my whole efforts to securing the waterway to India – by the acquisition of Egypt or of Crete, and would in no way have discouraged the obliteration of Turkey.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

The business which brings you here to-day is of a peculiar character, due to the very peculiar character of the Empire over which the Queen rules. It yields to none, it is perhaps superior to all in its greatness, in its extent, in the vastness of its population, in the magnificence of its wealth. But it has this peculiarity which separates it from other empires-the want of continuity. The Empire is separated into parts, and distant parts, by large stretches of ocean, and what we are really here to do is to see how far we must acquiesce in the conditions which that separation causes, how far we can obliterate them by agreement and by organization.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

A party whose mission is to live entirely upon the discovery of grievances are apt to manufacture the element upon which they subsist.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

...when I am told that my ploughmen are capable citizens, it seems to me ridiculous to say that educated women are not just as capable. A good deal of the political battle of the future will be a conflict between religion and unbelief: & the women will in that controversy be on the right side.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

It is patent on the face of history that the aggregates of men who form communities, like the aggregates of atoms that form living bodies, are subject to laws of progressive change – be it towards growth or towards decay.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

One thing at least is clear-that no one believes in our good intentions. We are often told to secure ourselves by their affections, not by force. Our great-grand children may be privileged to do it, but not we.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury