Walter Bagehot: “I cannot agree, though the greatest authorities say it, that no 'unconscious selection' has been at work at the breed of…”

Savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held their ground before the ancient.

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.

Nothing promotes intellect like intellectual discussion, and nothing promotes intellectual discussion so much as government by discussion.

If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.