Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

I have read somewhere or other, — in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, — that history is philosophy teaching by examples.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

They (Thucydides and Xenophon) maintained the dignity of history.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke