Quote

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

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
Real
Tyrants
Tyranny
Neighbor
Door
Doors
Talk
Next
May
Nero

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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
Image
The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
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
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
Image
In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter Bagehot
Image
Life is a school of probability.
Walter Bagehot
Image
Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
Walter Bagehot
Image
Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Walter Bagehot
Image
We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
Walter Bagehot
Image
Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot
Image
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
Walter Bagehot
Image
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.
Walter Bagehot