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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.

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
Journalist
Political Scientist
Politician
Sociologist
Langport
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Destruction
History
Prepared
Strewn
Littles
Soon
Manliness
Little
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World
Nations
Thus

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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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Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
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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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Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
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We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.
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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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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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I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
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Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.
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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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Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
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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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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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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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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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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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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.
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