{"quotes":[{"text":"The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Even when Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; even when the menace of dynastic conflicts had receded in to the coloured past; even when kingship had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional forms; the principle of hereditary Monarchy continued to furnish the State with certain specific and inimitable advantages.Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The King personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. Consecrated as he is to the service of his peoples, he possesses a religious sanction and is regarded as someone set apart from ordinary mortals. In an epoch of change, he remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. A legitimate Monarch moreover has no need to justify his existence, since he is there by natural right. He is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure.The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his personal prejudices or affections, he is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State.","author":"Harold Nicholson","tags":["british","constitution","continuity","dictator","elect","government","hereditary","identity","institution","king","legitimate","monarch","neutral","partisan","political","politician","president","queen","royal-family","service","sovereign","state","succession","terrorism"],"id":5646,"author_id":"Harold+Nicholson"},{"text":"The ability to change constantly and effectively is made easier by high-level continuity.","author":"Michael Porter","tags":["ability","easier","continuity "],"id":13717,"author_id":"Michael+Porter"},{"text":"A cardinal tenet of conservatism is that social inertia is – and ought to be – strong. It discourages and, if necessary, defeats the political grandiosity of those who would attempt to engineer the future by rupturing connections with the past.","author":"George F. Will","tags":["continuity","culture","moderation"],"id":14475,"author_id":"George+F.+Will"},{"text":"Time after time during the next six months, he would put me together again.","author":"H.W. Brands","tags":["continuity","discipleship","friendship","longitudinal","marriage","relationships"],"id":23550,"author_id":"H.W.+Brands"},{"text":"(Bonhoeffer's) change was not an ungainly, embarrassing leap from which he would have to retreat slightly when he gained more maturity and perspective. It was by all accounts a deepening consistent with what had gone before.","author":"Eric Metaxas","tags":["continuity","discipleship","maturation","sovereignty-of-god","spiritual-development"],"id":26407,"author_id":"Eric+Metaxas"},{"text":"He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.","author":"Frank Herbert","tags":["continuity","discernment","perspective","prophecy"],"id":38177,"author_id":"Frank+Herbert"},{"text":"Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission.","author":"Meir Soloveichik","tags":["love","first","continuity "],"id":42220,"author_id":"Meir+Soloveichik"},{"text":"Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["confusion","continuity","labeling","vocabulary","word-choice"],"id":62298,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"America's mission is to join the most ancient civilizations with the most modern. John Augustus Roeblin.","author":"H.W. Brands","tags":["continuity","technology"],"id":77161,"author_id":"H.W.+Brands"},{"text":"Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes.","author":"Harold Bloom","tags":["advocacy","continuity","politics","reading","timelessness"],"id":100391,"author_id":"Harold+Bloom"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":42,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}