“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 my triumph is the only final cause that the Conservative party can plead for their own existence.”

—  Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), p. 12

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Now if Conservative has any meaning at all, it means anti-Radical. The Radicals are the only inheritors of the revoluti…" by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury?
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury 112
British politician 1830–1903

Related quotes

Hannah Arendt photo

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

The New Yorker (12 September 1970).

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“To act the part of the fulcrum from which the least Radical portion of the party opposed to them can work upon their friends and leaders, is undoubtedly not an attractive future…it may well end in the moderate Liberals enjoying a permanent tenure of office, propped up mainly by their support…Yet it is the only policy by which the Conservatives can now effectively serve their country.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Quarterly Review, 127, 1869, p. 560

Dorothy Thompson photo

“Radicals and Conservatives are not at all unlike, temperamentally. They want order, organization, efficiency, perfection. The Conservative or Reactionary thinks these can be best obtained by putting and keeping the power in the hands of a small class. He is afraid that an extension of democracy will destroy form and tradition, which he believes are essential to holding any society together. The Radical is so obsessed by the obvious faults of society that he wants to pull everything up by the roots and start all over again, and build a perfect society according to a blueprint. It is interesting that when the extreme Radicals triumph—in a revolution, for instance, as in Russia—they immediately become rigidly conservative, and punish all deviation rigorously. The worst fundamentalists in the world today are the Russian communists.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938), p. 86

Mark Twain photo

“The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Brian Eno photo

“The reason conservatives cohere and radicals fight: everyone agrees about fears, no one about visions.”

Brian Eno (1948) English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist

July 19, 1995, p. 159
A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“I entirely agree with you, that an union between the Conservative party and the Radical masses offers the only means by which we can preserve the Empire. Their interests are identical; united they form the nation; and their division has only permitted a miserable minority, under the specious name of the People, to assail all rights of property and person. Since I first entered public life, now eight years ago, I have worked for no other object and no other end than to aid the formation of a national party.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Charles Attwood (7 June 1840), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 486

Leo Rosten photo

“Conservative: One who admires radicals a century after they're dead.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods
Variants:
A conservative is someone who admires radicals a century after they're dead.
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

Ralph Steadman photo

“Funny thing about Americans. They are the first to adopt weird lifestyles and radical views but they are the most conservative race on earth.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Watergate Follies, p. 98
The Joke's Over (2006)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Campaign speech at High Wycombe (27 November 1832), cited in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 1 (1882).
1830s
Context: I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few

R. A. Lafferty photo

“Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 5 : Muerte De Boscaje
Context: Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.

Related topics