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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.

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
Invented
Phrases
Opposition
England
Majesty
Phrase

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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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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Poverty is an anomaly to rich people it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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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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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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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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It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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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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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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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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One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
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The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Walter Bagehot
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Money is economic power.
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Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.
Walter Bagehot