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The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

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
Rather
Pain
Political
Undergo
Nature
Hasty
Human
Leap
Painful
Humans
Opinion
Without
Politics
People

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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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The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.
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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 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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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.
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To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
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The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
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Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
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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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The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
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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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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 reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
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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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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.
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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.
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The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
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Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
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