One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
-- Walter Bagehot
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
-- Walter Bagehot
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
-- Walter Bagehot
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
-- Walter Bagehot
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
-- Walter Bagehot
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
-- Walter Bagehot
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
-- Walter Bagehot
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
-- Walter Bagehot
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
-- Walter Bagehot
Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.
-- Walter Bagehot
Woman absent is woman dead.
-- Walter Bagehot
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
-- Walter Bagehot
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
-- Walter Bagehot
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
-- Walter Bagehot
The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
-- Walter Bagehot
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.
-- Walter Bagehot
The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.
-- Walter Bagehot
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
-- Walter Bagehot
All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that 'delays are dangerous,' and that the sluggish man--the man 'who roasteth not that which he took in hunting'— will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
-- Walter Bagehot
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
-- Walter Bagehot
Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required — are impediments — in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham — a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we 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.
-- Walter Bagehot
I wish the art of benefiting men had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has become slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. 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. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world, and this is entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by rapid action--that they will most benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen 'something' ought to be done to stay and prevent it.
-- Walter Bagehot
The issue put before these electors was, which of two rich people will you choose?
-- Walter Bagehot
In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.
-- Walter Bagehot
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.
Technorati Tags: Quotations
Post new comment