Quotes from bagehot walter xi

Books are for various purposes—tracts to teach, almanacs to sell, poetry to make pastry, but this is the rarest sort of book, a book to read.

A great deal of the reticence of diplomacy had, I think history shows, much better be spoken out.

Cautious men have many adverbs, "usually," "nearly," "almost ": safe men begin, " it may be advanced " : you never know precisely what their premises are, nor what their conclusion is; they go tremulously like a timid rider; they turn hither and thither; they do not go straight across a subject, like a masterly mind.

Failure is ever impending.

Not only does the nation endure a Parliamentary government, which it would not do if Parliament were immoderate, but it likes Parliamentary government. A sense of satisfaction permeates the country because most or the country feels it has got the precise thing that suits it.

Strong as the propensity to imitation is among civilized men, we must conceive it as an impulse of which their minds have been partially denuded. Like the far-seeing sight, the infallible hearing, the magical scent of the savage, it is a half-lost power. It was strongest in ancient times, and IS strongest in uncivilized regions.

Our Government cannot buy for minor clerks the best ability of the nation in the cheap currency of pure honour, and no Government is rich enough to buy very much of it in money.

The courage which strengthens an enemy and which so loses, not only the present battle, but many after battles, is a heavy curse to men and nations.

To exert itself, the will, like the arm, requires to have an obvious and a definite resistance, to know where it is, why it is, whence it comes, and whither it goes.

But in free nations, the votes so weighed or so counted must decide. A perfect free government is one which decides perfectly according to those votes; an imperfect, one which so decides imperfectly; a bad, one which does not so decide at all.

Not only does a bureaucracy thus tend to under-government, in point of quality; it tends to over-government, in point of quantity.

Some inquire from genuine love of knowledge, or from a real wish to improve what they ask about; others to see their name in the papers.

The facts of two things being often found together is rather a reason for, than an objection to, separating them, in idea. Sometimes they are NOT found together, and then we may be puzzled if we have not trained ourselves to separate them.

Women have now marvelous means of winning their way in the world, and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle without mind.

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.