Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury - Government Quotes

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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
... the central doctrine of Conservatism, that it is better to endure almost any political evil than to risk a breach of the historic continuity of government.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
I wish party government was at the bottom of the sea. It is only insincerity codified.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
I have a profound distrust of government inspectors, and I am generally disposed to find them wrong.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Of intervening in the domestic affairs of foreign states:
There is no practice which the experience of nations more uniformly condemns, and none which governments more consistently pursue.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
... this,—which is called self-government, but is really government by the majority,—works admirably when it is confided to people who are of Teutonic race, but... does not work so well when people of other races are called upon to join in it.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
A Government which is strong enough to hold its own will generally command an acquiescence which with all but very speculative minds, is the equivalent of contentment.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury