Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter BagehotRead
Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how loyalty and fear influence voting behavior in assemblies.
Walter Bagehot's quote emphasizes that within an assembly, the efficiency of decision-making hinges on solid support, which is often rooted in personal loyalty to influential individuals or the principles they uphold. This loyalty is not always based on admiration but often stems from a fear of retribution, suggesting that voting against powerful figures could jeopardize one's own influence or status.
In practice
During a political debate, this quote can be used to illustrate why members of the legislature may hesitate to vote against party leaders.
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.
Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.
A man without a vote is man without protection.
This political climate today reminds me of what my father must have gone through in 1942, when the winds of war and fires of hate were surrounding him. We have a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, using the same rhetoric that my father must have heard from elected officials.
Without a single shot we've managed to liberate the world of communism but now there is a need for a global solidarity.
The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.
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