Walter Bagehot Quotes

131 Sourced Quotes

The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.

Walter Bagehot
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.

Walter Bagehot
Science tries to find in each bit of earth the record of the causes which made it precisely what it is; those forces have left their trace, she knows, as much as the tact and hand of the artist left their mark on a classical gem.

Walter Bagehot
In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

Walter Bagehot
The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.

Walter Bagehot
Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

Walter Bagehot
The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.

Walter Bagehot
In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious.

Walter Bagehot
The essence of Toryism is enjoyment?but as far as communicating and establishing your creed are concernedtrya little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is, to enjoy old customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is, to enjoy that state of things.

Walter Bagehot
Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd. There seems an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments.

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

Walter Bagehot