"Salisbury was animated by the knowledge that it is easier to lose good things than to create them, and that the task of politics is to understand an inheritance of laws and institutions, and to protect it from unnecessary experiment. That vision of politics is perhaps peculiar to the English-speaking world. And it comes to us precisely from our great tradition of political amateurism. It is ambition and the lust for power that inspires people to march to the drum of progress. The person who acquires political power by the accident of birth, who has nothing to gain from its exercise in the way of money, status or recognition, and who regards the business of government as the wise disposition of inherited goods, is a great force for stability. If an explanation is needed of the peace that prevailed in England, when the whole of Europe was eager for revolution and war, then it is to be found in people like Lord Salisbury."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomUniversity of Oxford facultyConservative Party (UK) politicians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Roger Scruton, England: An Elegy (2000; 2006), p. 190
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil%2C_3rd_Marquess_of_Salisbury
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), styled Lord Robert Cecil before the death of his elder brother in 1865, and Viscount Cranborne from June 1865 until his father died in April 1868, was a three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, during 1885–1886, 1886–1892 and 1895–1902.
223 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury →
Related Quotes
"On reflection, I am convinced that turbulence as well as every other evil temper of this evil age belongs not to the …"
"In an age when national greatness depends not on numbers or on territory, but on intelligence, the development of int…"
"The fact was, that articles of prime necessity, such as tea and sugar, were adulterated to such an extent as material…"
"A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory."
"Now if Conservative has any meaning at all, it means anti-Radical. The Radicals are the only inheritors of the revolu…"
"[T]he splitting up of mankind into a multitude of infinitesimal governments, in accordance with their actual differen…"
"[T]hough it is England's right to enforce the law of Europe [i.e. treaties] as between contending states, she has no …"
"Not the number of noses, but the magnitude of interests, should furnish the elements by which the proportion of repre…"
"The days and weeks of screwed-up smiles and laboured courtesy, the mock geniality, the hearty shake of the filthy han…"
"We are not the same people that we have been, either in our social characteristics, in our patriotic sentiments, or i…"