
“Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant. ”
Source: Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland (29 October 1867); quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 291.
“Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant. ”
"Free Weeds" in National Review (29 June 2004).
Context: Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.
The laws concerning marijuana aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder.
But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating.
General rules based on individual victims are unwise.
And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend.
“Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.”
Address at the Cow Palace on Accepting the Nomination of the Republican National Convention (August 23, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on Janunary 25, 2021.
1950s
“If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.”
Playboy interview (1980)
Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.
Prime Minister
The Poverty of Philosophy
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 1 (2001)
"Civil Disobedience".
Crises of the Republic (1969)
“As one individual changes, the system changes.”
Source: The Integration of the Personality (1939), p. 285