Walter Bagehot quotes | Thousands Of Quotes

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No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

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.

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

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

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.

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

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

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

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.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

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.