Walter Bagehot

(1826 - 1877) British author, journalist, and editor

• "Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders."

• The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.
  • Physics and Poliitcs or Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of 'Natural Selection' and 'Inheritiance' to Political Society published 1872

Books by Walter Bagehot

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