Quotes By Walter Bagehot
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
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
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
Walter Bagehot
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter Bagehot
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.
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
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
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
Walter Bagehot
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
Walter Bagehot
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter Bagehot
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Walter Bagehot