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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.
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
Made
Popular
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Judgment
Exaggeration
Elements
Incidents
Virtue
Legends
Greater
Virtues
Interesting
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Also
Element
Great
Vices
Softer
More quotes by Walter Bagehot
The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
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Capital must be propelled by self-interest it cannot be enticed by benevolence.
Walter Bagehot
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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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
The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.
Walter Bagehot
A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
Walter Bagehot
Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.
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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 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.
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Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
Walter Bagehot
Throughout the greater part of his life George III was a kind of 'consecrated obstruction'.
Walter Bagehot
To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
Walter Bagehot
Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
Walter Bagehot
Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.
Walter Bagehot
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
Walter Bagehot
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot
It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.
Walter Bagehot
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
Walter Bagehot
