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

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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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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No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
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The purse strings tie us to our kind.
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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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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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A cabinet is a combining committee, a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
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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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Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
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No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
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The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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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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A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
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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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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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A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
Walter Bagehot
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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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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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Nations touch at their summits.
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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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