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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

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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
Best
Shadow
Like
Rest
Greatest
Rembrandt
Causes
Selected
History
Vivid
Art
Unseen
Light
Casts
Certain
Leaves

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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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 have a chance for it.
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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.
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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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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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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.
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The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.
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To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
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The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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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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Money is economic power.
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Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
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Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
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A cabinet is a combining committee, a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
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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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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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