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
men thinking long
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.
art thinking government
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.
thinking ice different
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.
great king monarchy rights sovereign three
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.
beats conquest english-author hard impact meanness military virtues
Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
fear long judgement
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.
actions beginning bond civilization condition impose intense legality marked men settled tendency ties
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 -
real essence energy
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
english-author few good people written
The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
cannot english-author great life people
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
care inevitable routine
It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.
heart intellect intelligence-and-intellectuals martyr soul truth
He believes, with all his heart and soul and strength, that there is such a thing as truth; he has the soul of a martyr with the intellect of an advocate.
kind obstruction greater
Throughout the greater part of his life George III was a kind of 'consecrated obstruction'.
military war race
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.