WALTER BAGEHOT QUOTES VII

English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)

We live among the marvels of science, but we know how little they change us. The essentials of life are what they were. We go by the train, but we are not improved at our journey's end. We have railways, and canals, and manufactures--excellent things, no doubt, but they do not touch the soul. Somehow, they seem to make life more superficial.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Biographical Studies

Tags: technology


There was a great deal of excellent hammering hammered in the parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do should sit tranquil.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies


Look at a railway stall; you see books of every color—blue, yellow, crimson, "ringstreaked, speckled, and spotted," on every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with every conceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—but all small. People take their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: books


Wit is part of the machinery of the intellect.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies


On few subjects has more nonsense been written than on the learning of Shakespeare.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: learning


"Maternity," it has been said, "is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion."

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: fathers


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


Progress is only possible in those happy cases where the force of legality has gone far enough to bind the nation together, but not far enough to kill out all varieties and destroy nature's perpetual tendency to change.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: change


But what ARE nations? What are these groups which are so familiar to us, and yet, if we stop to think, so strange; which are as old as history; which Herodotus found in almost as great numbers and with quite as marked distinctions as we see them now? What breaks the human race up into fragments so unlike one another, and yet each in its interior so monotonous? The question is most puzzling, though the fact is so familiar, and I would not venture to say that I can answer it completely, though I can advance some considerations which, as it seems to me, go a certain way towards answering it. Perhaps these same considerations throw some light, too, on the further and still more interesting question why some few nations progress, and why the greater part do not.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: question


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


The most valuable result of many years is a nicely balanced mind instinctively heedful of various errors.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: mind


Indeed, the dangers arising from a party spirit in Parliament exceeding that of the nation, and of a selfishness in Parliament contradicting the true interest of the nation, are not great dangers in a country where the mind of the nation is steadily political, and where its control over its representatives is constant. A steady opposition to a formed public opinion is hardly possible in our House of Commons, so incessant is the national attention to politics, and so keen the fear in the mind of each member that he may lose his valued seat. These dangers belong to early and scattered communities, where there are no interesting political questions, where the distances are great, where no vigilant opinion passes judgment on Parliamentary excesses, where few care to have seats in the chamber, and where many of those few are from their characters and their antecedents better not there than there. The one great vice of Parliamentary government in an adult political nation, is the caprice of Parliament in the choice of a Ministry. A nation can hardly control it here; and it is not good that, except within wide limits, it should control it. The Parliamentary judgment of the merits or demerits of an administration very generally depends on matters which the Parliament, being close at hand, distinctly sees, and which the distant nation does not see. But where personality enters, capriciousness begins. It is easy to imagine a House of Commons which is discontented with all statesmen, which is contented with none, which is made up of little parties, which votes in small knots, which will adhere steadily to no leader, which gives every leader a chance and a hope. Such Parliaments require the imminent check of possible dissolution; but that check is (as has been shown) better in the Premier than in the sovereign; and by the late practice of our constitution, its use is yearly ebbing from the sovereign, and yearly centering in the Premier. The Queen can hardly now refuse a defeated Minister the chance of a dissolution, any more than she can dissolve in the time of an undefeated one, and without his consent.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: chance


An indifferent Parliament may be much improved by the steadying effect of grave affairs; but a Parliament which has no such affairs must be intrinsically excellent, or it will fail utterly.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution


The conspicuous dignity awakens the sentiment of reverence, and men, often very undignified, seize the occasion to govern by means of it.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: dignity


As a theoretical writer I can venture to say, what no elected member of Parliament, Conservative or Liberal, can venture to say, that I am exceedingly afraid of the ignorant multitude of the new constituencies. I wish to have as great and as compact a power as possible to resist it. But a dissension between the Lords and Commons divides that resisting power; as I have explained, the House of Commons still mainly represents the plutocracy, the Lords represent the aristocracy. The main interest of both these classes is now identical, which is to prevent or to mitigate the rule of uneducated numbers. But to prevent it effectually, they must not quarrel among themselves; they must not bid one against the other for the aid of their common opponent. And this is precisely the effect of a division between Lords and Commons. The two great bodies of the educated rich go to the constituencies to decide between them, and the majority of the constituencies now consist of the uneducated poor. This cannot be for the advantage of any one.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: power


t is idle to expect an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has lived by his judgment; to expect a man whose career will be the same whether he is discreet or whether he is indiscreet to have the nice discretion of one who has risen by his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be wise.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: genius


In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: wealth


What health is to the animal, Liberalism is to the polity. It is a principle of fermenting enjoyment, running over all the nerves, inspiring the frame, happy in its mind, easy in its place, glad to behold the sun.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: health


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