Walter Bagehot quotes

Walter Bagehot was an English journalist, businessman, and essayist, renowned for his writings on government, economics, and literature. His work as editor of The Economist and his influential book "The English Constitution" shaped public understanding of political systems. He remains an important figure in political and economic thought. Here are 105 of his quotes:

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Walter Bagehot

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

Walter Bagehot

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Walter Bagehot

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

Walter Bagehot

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

Walter Bagehot

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

Walter Bagehot

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Walter Bagehot

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

Walter Bagehot

Nations touch at their summits.

Walter Bagehot

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

Walter Bagehot

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.

Walter Bagehot

Whatever expenditure is sanctioned-even when it is sanctioned against the ministry's wish-the ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest motive to oppose extra outlay.... The ministry is (so to speak) the breadwinner of the political family, and has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory; just as the head of a family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his daughters.

Walter Bagehot

Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still."

Walter Bagehot

A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature - a good bit, of course, but a bit only - in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.

Walter Bagehot

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

A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.

Walter Bagehot

The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.

Walter Bagehot

The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.

Walter Bagehot

The purse strings tie us to our kind.

Walter Bagehot

All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man - the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" - will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

Walter Bagehot

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

Walter Bagehot