Walter Bagehot Quotes
In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.
The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.
The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
Throughout the greater part of his life George III was a kind of 'consecrated obstruction'.
But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.
A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.
Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure it interests the whole mind . . . more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
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.
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people: it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.