Political Quotes

Walter Bagehot: “Paley said many shrewd things, but he never said a better thing than that it was much harder to make men see a…”

On the record
Paley said many shrewd things, but he never said a better thing than that it was much harder to make men see a difficulty than comprehend the explanation of it.
Said by
Walter Bagehot

Editor's note · Context

Bagehot quotes Paley to highlight the challenge of making people recognize difficulties in governance.

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More from Walter Bagehot

These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.

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The casual line was traced according to the strength of deceased combatants; succeeding generations fought elsewhere; and the hesitating line of a half-drawn battle was left to stand for a perpetual limit.

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The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.

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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.

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