Walter Bagehot: “Great communities have scarcely ever--never save for transient moments--been ruled by their highest thought.”

That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.

I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of LUCKY rites.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.

The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.