Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehotwas a British journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, and literature...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth3 February 1826
temptation religion vices
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
people political politics
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
life art philosophy
Life is a school of probability.
men politics opinion
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
sacrifice giving political
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.
government political excellence
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.
freedom assuming theocracy
A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
sorry real political
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
men intellectual would-be
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.
marriage race half
Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
world philosopher nations
But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.
block worry political
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.
men political may
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.
cheer real hands
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.