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

Walter Bagehot

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Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
Businessperson
Economist
Engineer
Journalist
Political Scientist
Politician
Sociologist
Langport
Somerset
People
Idle
Meeting
Meetings
Politics
Less
Bigs
Political
Nothing
Parliament

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Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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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.
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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 economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
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To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
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The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
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In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
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Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
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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.
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Poverty is an anomaly to rich people it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
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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.
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The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.
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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
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