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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
Politician
Sociologist
Langport
Somerset
Well
Modern
Laughed
Men
Went
Caring
Life
Stars
Useless
Tenths
Looking
Believed
Proverb
Anyone
Nine
Contemporaries
Science
Concern
Dreamers
Thought
Produce
Dreamer
Wells
Respect
Walked

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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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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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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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A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
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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.
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If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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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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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
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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 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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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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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.
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You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
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It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
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The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.
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A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
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