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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Lucius Cary, 2d Viscount Falkland (1610?–1643)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 175
AUTHOR: Lucius Cary, 2d Viscount Falkland (1610?–1643)
QUOTATION: When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
ATTRIBUTION: LUCIUS CARY, VISCOUNT FALKLAND, “A Speech Concerning Episcopacy,” delivered in 1641.—Falkland, A Discourse of Infallibility, p. 3 (1660).

While the exact date and audience of this speech are uncertain, the speech is known to deal with the Root and Branch Petition, which proposed doing away with bishops in the church (the episcopal system). Some historians consider this issue as the beginning of the definition of parties in Parliament.—J. A. R. Marriott, The Life and Times of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, pp. 179–80 (1907).
SUBJECTS: Change