On the record
Ages of sedentary, quiet, thinking people were required before that noisy existence began, and without those pale preliminary students it never could have been brought into being.
Said by
Walter Bagehot
Source
gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “Ages of sedentary, quiet, thinking people were required before that noisy existence began, and without those pale…”
Editor's note · Context
Bagehot argues that periods of quiet contemplation were essential for the development of modern science.
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More from Walter Bagehot
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
Political philosophy is still more imperfect; it has been framed from observations taken upon regular specimens of politics and States; as to these its teaching is most valuable.
I cannot, therefore, join in the full cry against anomalies; in my judgment it may quickly overrun the scent, and so miss what we should be glad to find.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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