Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter BagehotThe 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 BagehotThe whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
Walter BagehotWomen--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
Walter BagehotEvery 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.
Walter BagehotAn 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 BagehotNo 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.
Walter BagehotThere seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for carriage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
Walter BagehotI'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
Walter BagehotA bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.
Walter BagehotNine tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers - who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them - who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars' - who were believed to be useless, if anyone could be such.
Walter BagehotIt has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'; that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.
Walter BagehotA princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
Walter BagehotA family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter BagehotCredit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?
Walter BagehotThe most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
Walter BagehotAn 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 BagehotWhat 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.
Walter BagehotYou may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
Walter BagehotLife 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.
Walter BagehotThe reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter BagehotPersecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
Walter BagehotThe characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern.
Walter BagehotSo long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Walter BagehotA schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
Walter BagehotRoyalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
Walter BagehotIn 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 BagehotNot only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
Walter BagehotThe apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of the a splendid procession; it is by them that the mob are influenced; it is they who the inspectors cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second hand carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.
Walter BagehotRoyalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.
Walter BagehotGreat and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
Walter BagehotGo ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.
Walter BagehotWhenever 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.
Walter BagehotEfficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.
Walter BagehotIt 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 BagehotWar both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.
Walter Bagehot