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In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

— Walter Bagehot Walter Scott : The Critical Heritage (1970)

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More quotes by Walter Bagehot

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Physics and Politics (1869)

A good horse likes to feel the rider’s bit; and a great deliberative assembly likes to feel that it is under worthy guidance.

The English Constitution (1894)

The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step.

Physics and Politics (1869)

A great assembly is as soon spoiled by over-indulgence as a little child.

The English Constitution (1894)

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

The English Constitution (1894)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.

Jerome The Cry for Justice (1915)

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Bagehot (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.