Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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.
The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.
Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
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.
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.
The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
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.
It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.
The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
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.
Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
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 best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
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.
Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.
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
A cabinet is a combining committee, a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.
I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.