Walter Bagehot: “Savages, again, do not improve; they hardly seem to have the basis on which to build, much less the material to put up…”

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.

Thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how many have become stationary.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.