Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury - Party 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

I had secretly indulged the hope that we should be beaten in this election. A spell in Opposition is so good for bracing up the Conservative fibre of our party.

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

It is a Party shackled by tradition; all the cautious people, all the timid, all the unimaginative, belong to it. It stumbles slowly and painfully from precedent to precedent with its eyes fixed on the ground.

Of the Conservative Party

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