Quote

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.

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
Belief
Steady
Collected
Fear
Requires
Maintained
Political
Vote
Votes
May
Soon
Assembly
Men
Mass
Efficiency
Principles
Attachment
Particular
Solid
Politics
Represent
Deferential

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

Image
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The maxim of science is simply that of common sense-simple cases first begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the incumbering and interfering agencies.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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
Image
The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.
Walter Bagehot
Image
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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
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
In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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
An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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
Image
An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
Walter Bagehot
Image
All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
Walter Bagehot
Image
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
Walter Bagehot
Image
To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
Walter Bagehot
Image
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.
Walter Bagehot
Image
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
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
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.
Walter Bagehot