Henry St John (1678 – 1751)
English statesman and philosopher.
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Nations, like men, have their infancy.
Patriotism must be founded on great principals and supported by great virtue.
The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.
Pride defeats its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and reverence into contempt.
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.
The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.
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.
I have read somewhere or other, — in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, — that history is philosophy teaching by examples.
They (Thucydides and Xenophon) maintained the dignity of history.
Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.
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