Walter Bagehot Quotes (75 Quotes)

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

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 m

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 -

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

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 Times has made many ministries.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

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.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

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.

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

So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong.

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

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.

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

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

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

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

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

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

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

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 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 economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

The essence of work is concentrated energy.

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

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 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.

I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.

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 gave a chance for it.

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

Woman absent is woman dead.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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