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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

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Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
Businessperson
Economist
Engineer
Journalist
Political Scientist
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Sociologist
Langport
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Men
Went
Caring
Life
Stars
Useless
Tenths
Looking
Believed
Proverb
Anyone
Nine
Contemporaries
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Wells
Respect
Walked
Well
Modern
Laughed

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Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
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When great questions end, little parties begin.
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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.
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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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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
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The maxim of science is simply that of common sense-simple cases first begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the incumbering and interfering agencies.
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The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created
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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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Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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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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A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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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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Nations touch at their summits.
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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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Throughout the greater part of his life George III was a kind of 'consecrated obstruction'.
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