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A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
Walter Bagehot
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Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
Businessperson
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Engineer
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More quotes by Walter Bagehot
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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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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But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.
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The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
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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.
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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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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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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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A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
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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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A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
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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.
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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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When great questions end, little parties begin.
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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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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?
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Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.
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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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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.
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