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Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

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
Men
Habit
Thoughts
Drink
Permeating
Influence
Exacts
Opinion
Habits
Public
Obedience
Words
Requires
Speak
Follow

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
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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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Most men of business think Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.
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A political country is like an American forest you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
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What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
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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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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 princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
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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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A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course, but a bit only in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.
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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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Capital must be propelled by self-interest it cannot be enticed by benevolence.
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The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created
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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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We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
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The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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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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We think of Euclid as of fine ice we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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