Quotes from bagehot walter viii

In many matters of business, perhaps in most, a continuity of mediocrity is better than a hotch-potch of excellences.

The English people do not easily change their rooted notions, but they have many unrooted notions.

A legislature continuously sitting, always making laws, always repealing laws, would have been both an anomaly and a nuisance.

But much argument is not required to guide the public, still less a formal exposition of that argument. What is mostly needed is the manly utterance of clear conclusions; if a statesman gives these in a felicitous way (and if with a few light and humorous illustrations, so much the better), he has done his part.

Now that the suffrage is universal, the average intellect and the average culture of the constituent bodies are excessively low; and even such mind and culture as there is has long been enslaved to authority.

t is idle to expect an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has lived by his judgment; to expect a man whose career will be the same whether he is discreet or whether he is indiscreet to have the nice discretion of one who has risen by his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be wise.

It is a great gain to society to have two idols: in the competition of idolatries the true worship gets a chance.

The supreme court of the English people ought to be a great conspicuous tribunal, ought to rule all other courts, ought to have no competitor, ought to bring our law into unity, ought not to be hidden beneath the robes of a legislative assembly.

It is by examining very bare, very dull, very unpromising things, that modern science has come to be what it is.

The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also in the thing represented.