Walter Bagehot quotes:

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

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.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created

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.

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.

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. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.

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 ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

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.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

Life is a school of probability.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

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.

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

There 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.

We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.

I'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.

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. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.

A 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.

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 have a chance for it.

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.

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.

The beginning of civilization is marked by an intense legality that legality is the very condition of its existence, the bond which ties it together but that legality - that tendency to impose a settled customary yoke upon all men and all actions

We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

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.

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course, but a bit only in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.

A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

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.

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.

All people are most credulous when they are most happy.

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.

But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.

Capital must be propelled by self-interest; it cannot be enticed by benevolence.

Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.

Credit 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?

Efficiency 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.

Every banker knows that if he has to prove he is worthy of credit, in fact his credit is gone.

Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.

In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious.

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.

In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.

It 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.

Life 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.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

Money is economic power.

Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.

Nations touch at their summits.

Nine 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.

No 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.

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It...makes you think that after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded....Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

Royalty 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.

Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.

The 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.

The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.

The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.

The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.

The 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.

The essence of Toryism is enjoyment?but as far as communicating and establishing your creed are concernedtrya little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is, to enjoy old customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is, to enjoy that state of things.

The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.

The maxim of science is simply that of common sense-simple cases first; begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the incumbering and interfering agencies.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.

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.

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.

The purse strings tie us to our kind.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards

Throughout the greater part of his life George III was a kind of 'consecrated obstruction'.

To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.

Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

War 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.

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.

What 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.

Whatever expenditure is sanctioned even when it is sanctioned against the ministry's wish the ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest motive to oppose extra outlay.... The ministry is (so to speak) the breadwinner of the political family, and has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory; just as the head of a family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his daughters.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Whenever 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.

Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.