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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.

Walter Bagehot

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Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
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No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
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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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One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
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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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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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So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
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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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It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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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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A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
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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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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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In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
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Capital must be propelled by self-interest it cannot be enticed by benevolence.
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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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Women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
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In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious.
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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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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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One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.
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