Walter Bagehot
Birthdate: February 3, 1826
Birthplace: Langport, Somerset, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: March 24, 1877
Occupation: Businessman, Economist, and Journalist
Profile: Editor of
The Economist (1860–1877).
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bagehot
Number of Quotes: 62
A cabinet is a combining committee-a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the executive part of the State.
The English Constitution
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
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.
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.
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of
escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses.
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
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.
An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has
also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.
Banking is a very delicate business.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart.
By the structure of the world we often want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest,
to change the helmsman - to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Constitutions are easily copied, temperaments are not.
The English Constitution
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.
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.
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
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.
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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.
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
Life is a school of probability.
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
Money will not manage itself.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
Physics and Politics
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
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.
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.
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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.
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.
The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
The dignified parts of Government are those which bring it force, which attract its motive power. The efficient parts only employ that power.
The English Constitution
The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion of the executive and legislative powers.
The essence of a bank is to be a place for loanable money.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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.
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
The secret of success is continuity of purpose.
The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.
The throne is the apex of the system; it is the symbol of the unity of the nation.
The English Constitution
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they
maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
The English Constitution
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
Woman absent is woman dead.
Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
The English Constitution
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