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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.

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
Government
Bureaucracy
Tends
Quantity
Tend
Quality
Point
Doe

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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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But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.
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The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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A cabinet is a combining committee, a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
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A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course, but a bit only in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.
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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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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.
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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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Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
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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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Business is really more agreeable than pleasure it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
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Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.
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Life is a school of probability.
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So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
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If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.
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A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
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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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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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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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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
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