Quote: An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism -- despotism during the campaign -- is indispensable. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: 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]
Quote: Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: 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]
Quote: 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]
Quote: 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]
Quote: We must not let daylight in upon the magic. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: 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. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: 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]
Quote: Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: 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. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: The cure for admiring the house of lords is to go and look at it. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: When great questions end, little parties begin. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: 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]
Quote: A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. [Walter Bagehot]
Quote: A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. [Walter Bagehot]