The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
Walter BagehotGreat and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
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