WALTER BAGEHOT QUOTES VI

English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)

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

WALTER BAGEHOT

Biographical Studies

Tags: temptation


The ages of isolation had their use, for they trained men for ages when they were not to be isolated.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: Men


Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: animals


Strong as the propensity to imitation is among civilized men, we must conceive it as an impulse of which their minds have been partially denuded. Like the far-seeing sight, the infallible hearing, the magical scent of the savage, it is a half-lost power. It was strongest in ancient times, and IS strongest in uncivilized regions.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: Men


Before history began there must have been in the nation which writes it much progress; else there could have been no history. It is a great advance in civilisation to be able to describe the common facts of life, and perhaps, if we were to examine it, we should find that it was at least an equal advance to wish to describe them.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: history


The faculties which fit a man to be a great ruler are not those of society; some great rulers have been unintelligible like Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and barbarous like Sir Robert Walpole. The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave things of office are as different from one another as two human occupations can be. There is no naturalness in uniting the two; the end of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very likely is remarkable for social defects, and is not eminent for social merits.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: light


But a good Government is well worth a great deal of social dullness. The dignified torpor of English society is inevitable if we give precedence, not to the cleverest classes, but to the oldest classes, and we have seen how useful that is.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: government


The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also in the thing represented.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: opinion


There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a bona fide traveler to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear sentences.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: reading


Nations touch at their summits.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution


The quaking bystanders in a superstitious age would soon have slain an isolated bold man in the beginning of his innovations.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: age


In the most intellectual city of the ancient world, in its most intellectual age, Socrates, its most intellectual inhabitant, discouraged the study of physics because they engendered uncertainty, and did not augment human happiness. The kind of knowledge which is most connected with human progress now was that least connected with it then.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: age


Nobody cares for a debate in Congress which "comes to nothing," and no one reads long articles which have no influence on events.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: Congress


Probably in most cases the greatest wisdom of a constitutional king would show itself in well-considered inaction.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: wisdom


The English people must miss a thousand minutiae that continental bureaucracies know even too well; but if they see a cardinal truth which those bureaucracies miss, that cardinal truth may greatly help the world.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: truth


An hereditary king is but an ordinary person, upon an average, at best; he is nearly sure to be badly educated for business; he is very little likely to have a taste for business; he is solicited from youth by every temptation to pleasure; he probably passed the whole of his youth in the vicious situation of the heir-apparent, who can do nothing because he has no appointed work, and who will be considered almost to outstep his function if he undertake optional work. For the most part, a constitutional king is a DAMAGED common man; not forced to business by necessity as a despot often is, but yet spoiled for business by most of the temptations which spoil a despot. History, too, seems to show that hereditary royal families gather from the repeated influence of their corrupting situation some dark taint in the blood, some transmitted and growing poison which hurts their judgments, darkens all their sorrow, and is a cloud on half their pleasure. It has been said, not truly, but with a possible approximation to truth, "That in 1802 every hereditary monarch was insane". Is it likely that this sort of monarchs will be able to catch the exact moment when, in opposition to the wishes of a triumphant Ministry, they ought to dissolve Parliament? To do so with efficiency they must be able to perceive that the Parliament is wrong, and that the nation knows it is wrong. Now to know that Parliament is wrong, a man must be, if not a great statesman, yet a considerable statesman—a statesman of some sort. He must have great natural vigor, for no less will comprehend the hard principles of national policy. He must have incessant industry, for no less will keep him abreast with the involved detail to which those principles relate, and the miscellaneous occasions to which they must be applied. A man made common by nature, and made worse by life, is not likely to have either; he is nearly sure not to be BOTH clever and industrious. And a monarch in the recesses of a palace, listening to a charmed flattery unbiased by the miscellaneous world, who has always been hedged in by rank, is likely to be but a poor judge of public opinion. He may have an inborn tact for finding it out; but his life will never teach it him, and will probably enfeeble it in him.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: business


In truth, it would seem that, living in the incessant din of a Calvinistic country, the best course for thoughtful and serious men was to be silent.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Men


The English have discovered pacific war. We may not be able to kill people as well as the French, or fit out and feed distant armaments as neatly as they do; but we are unrivalled at a quiet armament here at home which never kills anybody, and never wants to be sent anywhere.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: home


What writers are expected to write, they write; or else they do not write at all.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics


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.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: art