Best 108 quotes of Walter Bagehot on MyQuotes

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.

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

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.

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

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

A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course, but a bit only in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.

All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

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

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

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

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 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.

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

A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.

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

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

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.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

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

Capital must be propelled by self-interest; it cannot be enticed by benevolence.

Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.

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

Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?

Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.

Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.

Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.

I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.

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.

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.

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

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'; that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.

It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.

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

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

Life is a school of probability.

Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

Money is economic power.

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.

Nine tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers - who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them - who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars' - who were believed to be useless, if anyone could be such.

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

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

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

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It...makes you think that after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded....Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.