English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
In general, too, the conquerors would be better than the conquered (most merits in early society are more or less military merits), but they would not be very much better, for the lowest steps in the ladder of civilization are very steep, and the effort to mount them is slow and tedious.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
We have voluntary show enough already in London; we do not wish to have it encouraged and intensified, but quieted and mitigated.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Theodora never married. Love did not, however, kill her—at least, if it did, it was a long time at the task, as she survived these events more than sixty years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The most obvious evils cannot be quickly remedied.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
It will not answer to explain what all the things which you describe are not. You must begin by saying what they are.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A modern savage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the eighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is twisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a thousand strange prejudices; his feelings are frightened by a thousand cruel superstitions. The whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say, tattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place anywhere about it. But there is no reason to suppose the minds of pre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation of these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken ages.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The condition of the primitive man, if we conceive of him rightly, is, in several respects, different from any we know. We unconsciously assume around us the existence of a great miscellaneous social machine working to our hands, and not only supplying our wants, but even telling and deciding when those wants shall come. No one can now without difficulty conceive how people got on before there were clocks and watches; as Sir G. Lewis said, 'it takes a vigorous effort of the imagination' to realize a period when it was a serious difficulty to know the hour of day. And much more is it difficult to fancy the unstable minds of such men as neither knew nature, which is the clock-work of material civilization, nor possessed a polity, which is a kind of clock-work to moral civilization. They never could have known what to expect; the whole habit of steady but varied anticipation, which makes our minds what they are, must have been wholly foreign to theirs.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no Court there can be no evil influence from a Court.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
If A kills B before B kills A, then A survives, and the human race is a race of A's.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
But in all cases it must be remembered that a political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects, is an evil of the first magnitude; that a permanent combination of them would make them (now that so many of them have the suffrage) supreme in the country; and that their supremacy, in the state they now are, means the supremacy of ignorance over instruction and of numbers over knowledge.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
A great deal of the reticence of diplomacy had, I think history shows, much better be spoken out.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
We are not now concerned with perfection or excellence; we seek only for simple fitness and bare competency.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Yet there are certain rules and principles in this world which seem earthly, but which the most excellent may not on that account venture to disregard.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
To state the matter shortly, 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
The English Constitution
The sort of taxation tried in America, that of taxing everything, and seeing what every thing would yield, could not have been tried under a Government delicately and quickly sensitive to public opinion.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The mode of governing the country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut, and most administrations move in it because it is easier to move there than anywhere else.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The defect of this religion is, that it is too abstract for the practical, and too bare for the musing.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Respect is traditional; it is given not to what is proved to be good, but to what is known to be old.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution