Walter Bagehot: “But the action of a single will, the fiat of a single mind, are easy ideas: anybody can make them out, and no one can…”

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.

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

At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

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.