161 Quotes by Walter Bagehot

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism – despotism during the campaign – is indispensable.

Custom is the first check on tyranny; that fixed routine of social life at which modern innovations chafe, and by which modern improvement is impeded, is the primitive check on base power.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman – the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.

What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature’s favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.

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.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

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

Stupidity is nature’s favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.

The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created.