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Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
186 quotes
“We are not the same people that we have been, either in our social characteristics, in our patriotic sentiments, or in the tone of our moral and religious feelings.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1823 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Oxford Union (February 1850), quoted in H. A. Morrah, The Oxford Union, 1823-1923 (1923), p. 139
“On reflection, I am convinced that turbulence as well as every other evil temper of this evil age belongs not to the lower but to the middle classes.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal entry (28 March 1852), quoted in Lady Gwedolen Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume I (1921), p. 32
“In an age when national greatness depends not on numbers or on territory, but on intelligence, the development of intelligence is a duty the neglect of which will hazard our national position. In a day when thought, not force, is the ruler of mankind, and when in domestic government numbers are more powerful than wealth, it is of the most vital importance to the stability of our institutions that that thought should be sound and those numbers enlightened.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address (titled "National Education") in the lecture hall of the Mechanics' Institution in Stamford (6 November 1856), quoted in The Times (11 November 1856), p. 6
“The fact was, that articles of prime necessity, such as tea and sugar, were adulterated to such an extent as materially to affect the health of an enormous portion of the population, and, the poor man being unable to protect himself, he contended that it was the duty of this House to step in and protect him.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (7 July 1859), during the second reading of the Bill to afford protection to the poor against being imposed on in the purchase of adulterated articles, by empowering local bodies to employ…
“A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Fiat Experimentum in Corpore Vili', Saturday Review (25 June 1859), p. 776
“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 may triumph is the only final cause that the Conservative party can plead for their own existence.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, vol. I (March & July 1859), p. 12
“[T]hough it is England's right to enforce the law of Europe [i.e. treaties] as between contending states, she has no claim, so long as her own interests are untouched, to interfere in the national affairs of any country, whatever the extent of its misgovernment or its anarchy.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, vol. I (March & July 1859), p. 23
“Not the number of noses, but the magnitude of interests, should furnish the elements by which the proportion of representation should be computed...The classes that represent civilisation, the holders of accumulated capital and accumulated thought have a right to require securities to protect them from being overwhelmed by hordes who have neither knowledge to guide them nor stake in the Commonwealth to control them.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, vol. I (March & July 1859), pp. 28-29
“The days and weeks of screwed-up smiles and laboured courtesy, the mock geniality, the hearty shake of the filthy hand, the chuckling reply that must be made to the coarse joke, the loathsome, choking compliment that must be paid to the grimy wife and sluttish daughter, the indispensable flattery of the vilest religious prejudices, the wholesale deglutition of hypocritical pledges.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On canvassing for election; 'The Faction-Fights', Bentley's Quarterly Review, vol. II (March & July 1859), p. 355
“And above and beyond the mere commercial gain, there rose under Mr. Gladstone's magic wand the vista of an age of security and peace—disbanded armaments, forgotten jealousies, immunity not only from the scourge but from the panic of war; pleasant dreams, constantly belied by experience, constantly renewed by theorists, but too closely linked to the hopes of all who believe either in material progress or in the promises of religion ever to be abandoned as chimera.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Budget and the Reform Bill, Quarterly Review, vol. 107 (January & April 1860), p. 516
“Wherever democracy has prevailed, the power of the State has been used in some form or other to plunder the well-to-do classes for the benefit of the poor.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Budget and the Reform Bill, Quarterly Review, vol. 107 (January & April 1860), p. 524
“It was a part of a budget which even three months had proved to be a mass of miscalculation; it was the pet scheme of a cosmopolitan school who love England little, and whom England loves less, whose sympathies are half-American and half-French; and it was the first application of a theory of combined taxation and reform, according to which the poor were exclusively to fix the revenue which the rich were exclusively to pay.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘The Conservative Reaction’, Quarterly Review, vol. 108 (July & October 1860), p. 276
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Democracy on its Trial', Quarterly Review, vol. 110 (July & October 1861), p. 281
“[T]here is no more formidable obstacle than the Established Church to the spirit of rash and theoretic change which we, almost alone among the nations, have escaped .”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Church-rates', Quarterly Review, vol. 110 (July & October 1861), p. 545
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Lord Castlereagh's use of bribery to pass the Irish Act of Union; 'Lord Castlereagh', Quarterly Review, vol. 111 (January & April 1862), p. 204
“If any fact was clear amid the bewildering confusion of the French Revolution, it was that the gentleness, the concessions, the morbid tenderness of Louis XVI had only tended to precipitate his own and his people's doom, and aggravate the ferocity of those he tried by kindness to disarm.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Stanhope's Life of Pitt', Quarterly Review, vol. 111 (January & April 1862), pp. 538-539
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Confederate Struggle and Recognition', Quarterly Review, vol. 112 (July & October 1862), p. 542
“That great moral teacher, Mr. Punch, some years ago proclaimed a society which he called "The Anti-meddling-in-other-people's-business Society." Now, he sometimes wished in private that Her Majesty's Government belonged to that society. (Laughter and cheers.)”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the 5th Lincolnshire Volunteer Corps in Stamford (22 October 1862), quoted in The Times (23 October 1862), p. 7
“[T]hat shapeless, formless, fibreless mass of platitudes which in official cant is called "unsectarian religion".”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Four Years of a Reforming Administration', Quarterly Review, vol. 113 (January & April 1863), p. 266
“Moderation, especially in the matter of territory, has never been characteristic of democracy. Wherever it has had free play, in the ancient world or in the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a thirst for empire, and a readiness for aggressive war, has always marked it.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Danish Duchies', Quarterly Review, vol. 115 (January & April 1864), p. 239
“In the real business of life no one troubles himself much about 'moral titles'. No one would dream of surrendering any practical security, for the advantages of which he is actually in possession, in deference of the a priori jurisprudence of a whole Academy of philosophers.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The House of Commons', Quarterly Review, vol. 116 (July & October 1864), p. 263
“As property is in the main the chief subject-matter of legislation, so it is 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 (1830–1903) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The House of Commons', Quarterly Review, vol. 116 (July & October 1864), pp. 265-266
“[T]he 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 (1830–1903) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Saturday Review, vol. 17, 1864, pp. 129–30
“Resistance is folly or heroism—a virtue or a vice—in most cases, according to the probabilities there are of its being successful. The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Parliamentary Reform', Quarterly Review, vol. 117 (January & April 1865), p. 550
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Parliamentary Reform', Quarterly Review, vol. 117 (January & April 1865), p. 550
“Conflict in free states is the law of life.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Church in her Relations to Political Parties', Quarterly Review, vol. 118 (July & October 1865), p. 198
“Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning; and the opinions so formed by one generation become the conscientious convictions or the sacred instincts of the next.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Saturday Review, vol. 29, 1865, p. 532
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1832 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On resistance to the Reform Act 1832; 'The Conservative Surrender', Quarterly Review, vol. 123 (July & October 1867), p. 543
“There can be no finality in politics.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Conservative Surrender', Quarterly Review, vol. 123 (July & October 1867), p. 557
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to H. W. Acland (4 February 1867), quoted in Lady Gwedolen Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, Volume I (1921), p. 211
“As long as I sit for a Conservative borough, I must continue to rank in the party and I will do what I can to promote good legislation. But I cannot look upon them as more likely to promote any cause I may have at heart than the other side. The suffrage is gone: they are lukewarm about the Church, and would no doubt give it up, as they have given up other things, for the sake of office. And beyond these two there is nothing, so far as I know, of which the Conservatives are in any special way the protectors.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to J. A. Shaw-Stewart (17 April 1867), quoted in Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, Volume I (1921), p. 264
“The Lieutenant Governor of Bengal was to the fullest extent responsible for not having made any preparation against the famine...The doctrines of political economy had been worshipped as a sort of "fetish" by officials who, because they believed that in the long run supply and demand would square themselves, seemed to have utterly forgotten that human life was short, and that men could not subsist without food beyond a few days. They mechanically left the laws of political economy to work themselves out while hundreds of thousands of human beings were perishing from famine.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (2 August 1867) on the Orissa famine of 1866
“I do hope he [Bismarck] will burn down the Faubourg St. Antoine and crush out the Paris mob. Their freaks and madnesses have been a curse to Europe for the last eighty years.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to G. M. W. Sandford on the Paris Commune (26 October 1870), quoted in Paul Smith, Lord Salisbury on Politics: A Selection From His Articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860-1883 (1972), p. 105
“The conflict between Socialism and existing civilisation must be a death-struggle. If the combat is once commenced, one or other of the combatants must perish. It is idle to plead that the schemes of these men are their religion. There are religions so hostile to morality, so poisonous to the life-springs of society, that they are outside the pale of human tolerance.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Commune and the Internationale', Quarterly Review, vol. 131 (July & October 1871), p. 562
“I am sure that no more certain method, not only of dechristianizing, but demoralizing the youth of the classes who send their children to the Universities could be found than subjecting them to the influence of tutors who would start with the idea that all beliefs should be submitted for free selection to the consciences and intelligences of their pupils.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (8 May 1871)
“The whole of our conduct towards the Yankees is too disgusting to think calmly of. ... If we had recognised the South ten years ago, America would have now been nicely divided into hostile states.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter (1872), quoted in Andrew Roberts, Lord Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999), p. 50
“On Tory principles the case presents much that is painful, but no perplexity whatever. Ireland must be kept, like India, at all hazards: by persuasion if possible; if not, by force.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Position of Parties', The Quarterly Review, vol. 133 (July & October 1872), p. 572
“[T]he 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 (1830–1903) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Programme of the Radicals', The Quarterly Review, vol. 135 (July & October 1873), p. 544
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Northbrook on British rule in India (28 May 1874), quoted in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905 (1965), p. 65
“[Permitting discussions in the Indian Council seems to me] an unmeaning mimicry of the forms of popular institutions where the reality is impossible. What is called public opinion in India is frequently the opinion of a clique, and presents none of the guarantees for sound judgment possessed by a public opinion which represents the combined views of a large mass of different interests and classes. I have the smallest possible belief in 'Councils' possessing any other than consultative functions.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Northbrook (12 June 1874), quoted in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905 (1965), p. 104
“I am afraid a mistake was made by Lord Macaulay and others in the direction they gave to educational efforts in India. Popular education would have enabled the millions to raise themselves a little out of their extreme poverty. The University education only manufactures a redundant supply of candidate for the liberal professions in a country where the demand is small, and as a by-product turns out a formidable array of seditious article-writers.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Northbrook (25 March 1875), quoted in M. N. Das, Indian National Congress versus the British, Vol I (1978), p. 24
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Minute (20 April 1875), quoted in E. D. Steele, 'Salisbury at the India Office', in Lord Blake and Hugh Cecil (eds.), Salisbury: The Man and his Policies (1987), p. 141
“As to action the matter is simple: India is held by the sword: and its rulers must in all essentials be guided by the maxims which benefit the Government of the sword.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir Philip Wodehouse (4 June 1875), quoted in Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (2001), pp. 233-234
“It was time to put a stop to the growing idea that England ought to pay tribute to India as a kind of apology for having conquered her: & you have done it effectively.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Benjamin Disraeli (16 July 1875), quoted in Marvin Swartz, Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (1985), p. 17
“The vast multitudes of India I thoroughly believe are well contented with our rule. They have changed masters so often that there is nothing humiliating to them in having gained a new one.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a prize-giving ceremony in Cooper's Hill (July 1875), quoted in Frederick Sanders Pulling, The Life and Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury, K. G. (1885), p. 222
“Speaking generally, I am desirous to push forward the argument from the interests of the people more than has hitherto been done. As I have said, I consider it to be our true rule and measure of action, and our observance of it is the one justification for our presence in India.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Northbrook (25 August 1875), quoted in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905 (1965), p. 65
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton (7 July 1876), quoted in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905 (1965), p. 115
“It is clear enough that the traditional Palmerstonian policy [of British support for Ottoman territorial integrity] is at an end.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Disraeli (September 1876), quoted in G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume II, p. 85
“Diplomacy which does not rest on force is the most feeble and futile of weapons, and except for bare self-defence, we have not the force.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Lytton (8 March 1877), quoted in David Steele, Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography (2001), p. 108
“English policy is to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boat-hook to avoid collisions.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Lytton (9 March 1877), quoted in G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume II, p. 130