Walter Bagehot Quotes

Quotes about:

• A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

  Walter Bagehot

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Walter Bagehot (1858). “Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen”, p.272

  126 Copy quote

• Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

  Walter Bagehot

  Mean, Mind, Virtuous

  Walter Bagehot (1973). “Literary studies”

  57 Copy quote

• Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

  Walter Bagehot

  Life, Courage, War

  19 Copy 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

  Men, Imagination, Weakness

  Walter Bagehot (1930). “The English Constitution: And Other Political Essays”, p.51, Lulu.com

  32 Copy quote

• If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.

  Walter Bagehot

  Motivational, Gone, Credit

  "The fall of Bear Stearns: Bearing all", www.economist.com. March 5, 2009.

  8 Copy quote

• We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

  Walter Bagehot

  Magic, Daylight

  7 Copy quote

• Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.

  Walter Bagehot

  Looks, Faces, Impossible

  9 Copy quote

• An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

  Walter Bagehot

  Music, Communication, Silence

  24 Copy quote

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

  Walter Bagehot

  Art, Pain, Philosophy

  'Physics and Politics' (1872) 'The Age of Discussion'

  53 Copy quote

• A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

  Walter Bagehot

  Freedom, Government, Democracy

  Walter Bagehot (1951). “Literary Studies”

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Bagehot

  Men, Public Opinion, Influence

  "The Character of Sir Robert Peel" (1856)

  9 Copy quote

• A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

  Walter Bagehot

  Mother, Women, Inspiration

  Walter Bagehot (1910). “Literary Studies (Miscellaneous Essays): Hartley Coleridge. Shakespeare, the man. William Cowper. The first Edinburgh reviewers. Edward Gibbon. Percy Bysshe Shelley”

  9 Copy quote

• You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

  Walter Bagehot

  Real, Doors, Tyrants

  "The Character of Sir Robert Peel" (1856)

  95 Copy quote

• All people are most credulous when they are most happy.

  Walter Bagehot

  People

  Walter Bagehot (2007). “Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market”, p.160, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

• The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

  Walter Bagehot

  Real, Essence, Energy

  Walter Bagehot, Richard Holt Hutton (1889). “The Works of Walter Bagehot: With Memoirs by R. H. Hutton”

  14 Copy quote

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

  Walter Bagehot

  Meditation And Yoga, Long, Calming

  Richard Holt Hutton, Walter Bagehot (1860). “The National Review”, p.234

  20 Copy quote

• The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.

  Walter Bagehot

  Kings, Rights, Three

  The English Constitution "The Monarchy (continued)" (1867)

  85 Copy quote

• Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.

  Walter Bagehot

  Adventure, Banking, Caution

  8 Copy quote

• The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.

  Walter Bagehot

  Life Is, Pleasure, Pleasures Of Life

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Pain, People, Political

  Walter Bagehot, Ruth Dudley Edwards (1993). “The best of Bagehot”

  18 Copy quote

• Life is a school of probability.

  Walter Bagehot

  Life, Art, Philosophy

  Quoted in Rudolf Flesch's The New Book of Unusual Quotations

  29 Copy quote

• Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

  Walter Bagehot

  Strong, Heart, Government

  'The English Constitution' (1867) 'The Monarchy'

  18 Copy 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

  Art, Thinking, Government

  Walter Bagehot (1867). “The English Constitution”, p.237

  8 Copy quote

• Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

  Walter Bagehot

  Women, Men, Victim

  Walter Bagehot (1968). “The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot: The historical essays. v. 5-8. Political essays”

  6 Copy quote

• Nations touch at their summits.

  Walter Bagehot

  Summit, Nations

  The English Constitution "The House of Lords" (1867)

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