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The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.

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
Almost
Accidents
Moment
Destroy
Weakened
Moments
Essence
Unprecedented
Trust
Banking
May
System
Greatly
Great
Hurt
Accident
Much
Causes
Peculiar
Men
Small
Hidden

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Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
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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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In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
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The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
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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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Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay will those promises be kept?
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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.
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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.
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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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The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
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The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.
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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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Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
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The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
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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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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.
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The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
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