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

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Robert Gascoyne-Cecil Quotes
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
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
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
When great men get drunk with a theory, it is the little men who have the headache.
On political theorists

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
First-rate men will not canvass mobs; and if they did, the mobs would not elect the first-rate men.

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
First rate men will not canvas mobs: and mobs will not elect first rate men.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
As I have said, there are two points or two characteristics of the Radical programme which it is your special duty to resist. One concerns the freedom of individuals. After all, the great characteristic of this country is that it is a free country, and by a free country I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. That is not my notion of freedom.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it. The army of so-called reform, in every stage of its advance, necessarily converts a detachment of its force into opponents. The more rapid the advance the more formidable will the desertion become, till at last a point will be reached where the balance between the forces of conservation and destruction will be redressed, and the political equilibrium be restored.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury