Walter Bagehot: “If they could only have sat idle the other four hours, they would have…”

On the record

If they could only have sat idle the other four hours, they would have been rich men.

Said by

Walter Bagehot

Source

Bagehot suggests that idleness could have led to greater wealth for those who overexert themselves.

More from Walter Bagehot

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

But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious.

The power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren.

There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.

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Walter Bagehot: “If they could only have sat idle the other four hours, they would have been rich men.”