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

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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.
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We think of Euclid as of fine ice we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
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The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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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.
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So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
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Life is a school of probability.
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A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
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If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.
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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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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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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.
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Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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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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You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
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When great questions end, little parties begin.
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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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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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