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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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Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
Businessperson
Economist
Engineer
Journalist
Political Scientist
Politician
Sociologist
Langport
Somerset
Much
Essential
People
Mental
Essentials
Cynical
Large
Progressive
Whose
Scale
Liberty
Scales
Quality
Stupidity
Free
Permanent

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Life is a school of probability.
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A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
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Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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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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An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
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It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
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The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.
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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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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.
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To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
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Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.
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Capital must be propelled by self-interest it cannot be enticed by benevolence.
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