English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
Many men—most men—get to like or think they like that which is ever before them, and which those around them like, and which received opinion says they ought to like; or if their minds are too marked and oddly made to get into the mould, they give up reading altogether, or read old books and foreign books, formed under another code and appealing to a different taste. The principle of 'elimination,' the 'use and disuse' of organs which naturalists speak of, works here. What is used strengthens; what is disused weakens: 'to those who have, more is given;' and so a sort of style settles upon an age, and imprinting itself more than anything else in men's memories becomes all that is thought of about it.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
But a government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down the yoke of fixed custom.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The soul "itself by itself," could tell all it wanted if it would be true to its sublimer isolation.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
You have not a perception of the first elements in this matter till you know that government by a CLUB is a standing wonder.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Review writing is one of the features of modern literature. Many able men really give themselves up to it. Comments on ancient writings are scarcely so common as formerly; no great part of our literary talent is devoted to the illustration of the ancient masters; but what seems at first sight less dignified, annotation on modern writings was never so frequent.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Women have now marvelous means of winning their way in the world, and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle without mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
In the East, in a word, we are attempting to put new wine into old bottles-to pour what we can of a civilization whose spirit is progress into the form of a civilization whose spirit is fixity, and whether we shall succeed or not is perhaps the most interesting question in an age abounding almost beyond example in questions of political interest.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Treaties are quite as important as most laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative assemblies to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as to the essence of the treaty, is prima facie ludicrous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
It is a grave objection to our existing Parliamentary constitution that it gives much power to regions of past greatness, and refuses equal power to regions of present greatness.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Man might be described as a custom-making animal with more justice than by many of the short descriptions. In whatever way a man has done anything once, he has a tendency to do it again: if he has done it several times he has a great tendency so to do it, and what is more, he has a great tendency to make others do it also. He transmits his formed customs to his children by example and by teaching. This is true now of human nature, and will always be true, no doubt. But what is peculiar in early societies is that over most of these customs there grows sooner or later a semi-supernatural sanction. The whole community is possessed with the idea that if the primal usages of the tribe be broken, harm unspeakable will happen in ways you cannot think of, and from sources you cannot imagine.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature. It is not enough to have opportunity, it is essential to feel it. Some occasions come to all men; but to many they are of little use, and to some they are none.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A democracy will never, save after an awful catastrophe, return what has once been conceded to it, for to do so would be to admit an inferiority in itself, of which, except by some almost unbearable misfortune, it could never be convinced.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The idea that the head of the Government is the head of society is so fixed in the ideas of mankind that only a few philosophers regard it as historical and accidental, though when the matter is examined, that conclusion is certain and even obvious.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Sound men are sound from the first.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
There used to be a notion—not so much widely asserted as deeply implanted, rather pervadingly latent than commonly apparent in political philosophy—that in a little while, perhaps ten years or so, all human beings might, without extraordinary appliances, be brought to the same level. But now, when we see by the painful history of mankind at what point we began, by what slow toil, what favourable circumstances, what accumulated achievements, civilised man has become at all worthy in any degree so to call himself—when we realise the tedium of history and the painfulness of results—our perceptions are sharpened as to the relative steps of our long and gradual progress.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
There is nothing in the life before us comparable in interest to the tragic, gradual cracking of the great mind; the overtasking of the great capital, and the ensuing failure; the spectacle of heaving genius breaking in the contact with misfortune.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The deep sea of mysticism lies opposed to some natures; in some moods it is a sublime wonder; in others an "impious ocean,"—they will never put forth on it at any time.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Probably if we had historic records of the ante-historic ages—if some superhuman power had set down the thoughts and actions of men ages before they could set them down for themselves—we should know that this first step in civilization was the hardest step. But when we come to history as it is, we are more struck with the difficulty of the next step.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
First, it is laid down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers are quite divided—that each is entrusted to a separate person or set of persons—that no one of these can at all interfere with the work of the other. There has been much eloquence expended in explaining how the rough genius of the English people, even in the middle ages, when it was especially rude, carried into life and practice that elaborate division of functions which philosophers had suggested on paper, but which they had hardly hoped to see except on paper.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution