Walter Bagehot Quotes
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.
The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.
An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.
Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.