WALTER BAGEHOT QUOTES VII

English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)

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


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


To make a single nation illustrate a principle, you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics


A single run of luck has made the fortune of many a charm and many idols.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: charm


Nations touch at their summits.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution


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


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


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


Everybody who has studied mathematics knows how many shadowy difficulties he seemed to have before he understood the problem, and how impossible it was when once the demonstration had flashed upon him, ever to comprehend those indistinct difficulties again, or to call up the mental confusion, that admitted them. So in these days, when we cannot by any effort drive out of our minds the notion of law, we cannot imagine the mind of one who had never known it, and who could not by any effort have conceived it.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: effort


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


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 ancient customary societies the influence of manner, which is a primary influence, has been settled into rules, so that it may aid established usages and not thwart them—that it may, above all, augment the HABIT of going by custom, and not break and weaken it. Every aid, as we have seen, was wanted to impose the yoke of custom upon such societies; and impressing the power of manner to serve them was one of the greatest aids.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: custom


The English people do not easily change their rooted notions, but they have many unrooted notions.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: change


But no man would select the cadets of an aristocratic house as desirable administrators. They have peculiar disadvantages in the acquisition of business knowledge, business training, and business habits, and they have no peculiar advantages.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: business


But much argument is not required to guide the public, still less a formal exposition of that argument. What is mostly needed is the manly utterance of clear conclusions; if a statesman gives these in a felicitous way (and if with a few light and humorous illustrations, so much the better), he has done his part.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: humorous


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


If we remember the great reverence which used to be paid to nobility as such, we shall be surprised that the House of Lords as an assembly, has always been inferior; that it was always just as now, not the first, but the second of our assemblies. I am not, of course, now speaking of the middle ages: I am not dealing with the embryo or the infant form of our Constitution; I am only speaking of its adult form. Take the times of Sir R. Walpole. He was Prime Minister because he managed the House of Commons; he was turned out because he was beaten on an election petition in that House; he ruled England because he ruled that House. Yet the nobility were then the governing power in England. In many districts the word of some lord was law. The "wicked Lord Lowther," as he was called, left a name of terror in Westmoreland during the memory of men now living. A great part of the borough members and a great part of the county members were their nominees; an obedient, unquestioning deference was paid them. As individuals the peers were the greatest people; as a House the collected peers were but the second House.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution

Tags: nobility


Of all modes of enforcing moderation on a party, the best is to contrive that the members of that party shall be intrinsically moderate, careful, and almost shrinking men; and the next best to contrive that the leaders of the party, who have protested most in its behalf, shall be placed in the closest contact with the actual world.

WALTER BAGEHOT

The English Constitution