My views as to the reforms in the public service, which public safety and economy alike urgently call for, are, I think, well known to you; they have… - Lord Randolph Churchill

[T]he main principle and the guiding motive of the policy of the Government in the future will be to maintain intact and unimpaired the union of the Unionist party.

I consider it to have been my good fortune to have heard and to have read many speeches and many orations of the Prime Minister [William Ewart Gladstone] with regard to Ireland. Many of his most confident predictions, vaticinations, and declarations are fresh in my mind. I have been more than once under what may be called the wand of the magician; and I know of no experience to which I can compare it, except, perhaps, the taking of morphia. The sensations, while the operation is going on, are transcendent; but the recovery is bitter beyond all experience.

[H]e would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp.