Quote

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.

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
Going
Continuous
Mind
Symptoms
People
Mental
Minds
Speech
Habit
Symptom
Knowing
Proceeds
Common
Deficiency

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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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In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
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We think of Euclid as of fine ice we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
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Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
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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.
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Capital must be propelled by self-interest it cannot be enticed by benevolence.
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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 purse strings tie us to our kind.
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Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
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What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.
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Most men of business think Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.
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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.
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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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