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

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The distribution of property and the distribution of political power are inseparably connected. If power is not made to go with property, property will, in the long run, infallibly follow power.

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
[Property furnishes] almost the only motive power of agitation. A violent political movement (setting aside those where religious controversy is at work) is generally only an indication that a class of those who have little see their way to getting more by means of a political convulsion.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
We might as well hope for the termination of the struggle for existence by which, some philosophers tell us, the existence or the modification of the various species of organized beings upon our planet are determined. The battle for political power is merely an effort, well or ill-judged, on the part of the classes who wage it to better or to secure their own position. Unless our social activity shall have become paralyzed, and the nation shall have lost its vitality, this battle must continue to rage. In this sense the question of reform, that is to say, the question of relative class power, can never be settled.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
People imagine that where an evil exists, the Queen, the Lords and the Commons should stop it. I wonder they have not brought in an Act of Parliament to stop unfavourable weather on the occasion of political demonstrations.

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
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