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The maxim of science is simply that of common sense-simple cases first begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the incumbering and interfering agencies.

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
Sense
Cases
Agency
Interfering
Littles
Simply
Separate
Maxim
Little
Seeing
Acts
Agencies
Firsts
Possible
Add
Maxims
First
Common
Main
Comprehend
Simple
Accounts
Succession
Force
Begin
Thoroughly
Science
Effects
Interfere
Impede

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What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
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Nations touch at their summits.
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A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
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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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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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In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.
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The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern.
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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 Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
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Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence it has not the ballot-box before it its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.
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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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One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
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It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
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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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The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.
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Throughout the greater part of his life George III was a kind of 'consecrated obstruction'.
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