Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other mens thoughts, to speak other mens words, to follow other mens habits. – Walter Bagehot
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. – Walter Bagehot
Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns. – Walter Bagehot
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. – Walter Bagehot
For 13 to be unlucky would require there to be some kind of cosmic intelligence that counts things that humans count and that also makes certain things happen on certain dates or in certain places according to whether the number 13 is involved or not (whatever is involved might mean). – Douglas Hofstadter