The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. – Walter Bagehot
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other peoples minds. – Walter Bagehot
An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind. – 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
WASP is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so its inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not. – Christopher Hitchens