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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
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The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.
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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.
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A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
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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.
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One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
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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.
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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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The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
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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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A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence it has not the ballot-box before it its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.
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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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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition' that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.
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A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
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Money is economic power.
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Poverty is an anomaly to rich people it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
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The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
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