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In fact, you may place power in weak hands at a revolution, but you cannot keep it in weak hands.
Said by
Walter Bagehot
Source
gutenberg.orgWalter Bagehot: “In fact, you may place power in weak hands at a revolution, but you cannot keep it in weak hands.”
Editor's note · Context
Bagehot asserts that while power can be placed in weak hands during a revolution, it cannot be sustained there.
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More from Walter Bagehot
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.
But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
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