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

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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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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When great questions end, little parties begin.
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No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.
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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.
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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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A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
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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.
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What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.
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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.
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It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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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.
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So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
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Money is economic power.
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A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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The essence of Toryism is enjoyment?but as far as communicating and establishing your creed are concernedtrya little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is, to enjoy old customs the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is, to enjoy that state of things.
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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.
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