Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
Businessperson
Economist
Engineer
Journalist
Political Scientist
Politician
Sociologist
Langport
Somerset
Speak
Follow
Men
Habit
Thoughts
Drink
Permeating
Influence
Exacts
Opinion
Habits
Public
Obedience
Words
Requires

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

Image
Life is a school of probability.
Walter Bagehot
Image
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot
Image
But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay will those promises be kept?
Walter Bagehot
Image
So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
Walter Bagehot
Image
In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
Walter Bagehot
Image
If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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
Image
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.
Walter Bagehot
Image
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot
Image
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
Walter Bagehot
Image
An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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