Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Walter Bagehot (English Economist, Journalist)

Walter Bagehot (1826–77) was an English economist, political analyst, and journalist. He was one of the most influential journalists of the mid-Victorian period. As editor of the National Review since 1855, he strongly influenced political thinking and developments in social science. Later on, he served as editor of The Economist 1860–77.

Born in Langport, Somerset, Bagehot graduated in mathematics at University College London and was called to the Bar in 1852. After a spell as a banker in his father’s firm, he succeeded his father-in-law James Wilson as editor of The Economist in 1860.

Bagehot’s economic and political philosophies are shown in such best-known treatise as English Constitution (1867,) Thomas Hill Green (1836–82.) He applied the theory of evolution to politics and wrote Physics and Politics (1872.)

Bagehot advocated many constitutional reforms, including the introduction of life peers. His other notable works include Lombard Street (1875,) Literary Studies (1879,) and Economic Studies (1880.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Walter Bagehot

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Bureaucracy

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Society

An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Silence

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: The Mind, Mind

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Belief

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Politics, Politicians

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Kings, Royalty, Queens

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Progress

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Queens, Royalty, Kings

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Opinions

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: War

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Liberty

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Magic

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Exaggeration

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Weddings, Marriage

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Concentration, Focus

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Politics

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism—despotism during the campaign—is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Tyranny

The best security for people’s doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Duty

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.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Government

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Vice

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.
Walter Bagehot

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s habits.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Public opinion, Opinion

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Diplomacy

Life is a school of probability.
Walter Bagehot

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
Walter Bagehot

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Meditation, Work

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Law, Lawyers

There seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for carriage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
Walter Bagehot
Topics: Soul

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