13 Walter Bagehot Quotes on Power

Walter Bagehot quotes on power

1. 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.

3. In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.

6. 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.

7. Nations touch at their summits.

9. 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.

23. You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

29. A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

34. An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.

35. Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

38. In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.

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

53. We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

55. Woman absent is woman dead.