On the record
You can use the best classes of the respectful country; you can only use the worst where every man thinks he is as good as every other.
Said by
Walter Bagehot
Source
gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “You can use the best classes of the respectful country; you can only use the worst where every man thinks he is as good…”
Editor's note · Context
Bagehot argues that the best classes in a respectful society are more effective than the worst in an egalitarian one.
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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.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
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.
But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.
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