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The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.

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
Human
Melancholy
Humans
Reflection
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Harm
Good
Mankind
Perhaps
Question
Whether
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Doe
Benevolence

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Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.
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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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Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
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A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
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One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.
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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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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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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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Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.
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Money is economic power.
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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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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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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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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 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.
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The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
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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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The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
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