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Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

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
Attention
Interesting
Monarchs
Action
Concentrated
Government
Royalty
Persons
Monarchy
Person
Actions
Nation
Nations

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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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.
Walter Bagehot
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We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
Walter Bagehot
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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When great questions end, little parties begin.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
Walter Bagehot
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Nations touch at their summits.
Walter Bagehot
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The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.
Walter Bagehot
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A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
Walter Bagehot
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The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
Walter Bagehot
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The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
Walter Bagehot
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The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
Walter Bagehot
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot