Walter Bagehot

It gives now a vast strength to the entire Constitution, by enlisting on its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses; then it lived aloof, absorbed all the holiness into itself, and turned over all the rest of the polity to the…

A principal reason why the Monarchy so well consecrates our whole state is to be sought in the peculiarity many Americans and many utilitarians smile at.

No doubt it was absurd enough in the Abbe Sieyes to propose that a new institution, inheriting no reverence, and made holy by no religion, should be created to fill the sort of post occupied by a constitutional king in nations of…

But the blunder of Sieyes brings the excellence of real monarchy to the best light.

It is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant, but in neither case is it contentious.

The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party.

Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting parties--to be a visible symbol of unity to those…

In a country where people did not care for the outward show of life, where the genius of the people was untheatrical, and they exclusively regarded the substance of things, this matter would be trifling.

A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at all how the externals of life were managed.

Who is the showman is not material unless you care about the show.

But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.

We are not now remarkable for the highest sort of ambition; but we are remarkable for having a great deal of the lower sort of ambition and envy.

If the highest post in conspicuous life were thrown open to public competition, this low sort of ambition and envy would be fearfully increased.

Politics would offer a prize too dazzling for mankind; clever base people would strive for it, and stupid base people would envy it.

The literary world, the scientific world, the philosophic world, not only are not comparable in dignity to the political world, but in comparison are hardly worlds at all.

As are the papers, so are the readers; they, by irresistible sequence and association, believe that those people who constantly figure in the papers are cleverer, abler, or at any rate, somehow higher, than other people.

In this present age and country it would be very dangerous to give the slightest addition to a force already perilously great.

If the highest social rank was to be scrambled for in the House of Commons, the number of social adventurers there would be incalculably more numerous, and indefinitely more eager.

The Government was made the head of all society, all intercourse, and all life; everything paid allegiance to the sovereign, and everything ranged itself round the sovereign--what was next to be greatest, and what was farthest least.

The idea that the head of the Government is the head of society is so fixed in the ideas of mankind that only a few philosophers regard it as historical and accidental, though when the matter is examined, that conclusion is certain and…

In the first place, society as society does not naturally need a head at all.

Its constitution, if left to itself, is not monarchical, but aristocratical.

Society, in the sense we are now talking of, is the union of people for amusement and conversation.

There is nothing in this which needs a single supreme head; it is a pursuit in which a single person does not of necessity dominate.

This is society as it grew up in Greece or Italy, as it grows up now in any American or colonial town.