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As a ruler, Catherine professed a great contempt for system, which she said she had been taught to despise by her master Voltaire. She declared that in politics a capable ruler must be guided by "circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions."
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"Catherine II" article in The Encyclop?dia Britannica 11th edition (1910), Vol. V, p. 527; What here appears as a paraphrased statement was later quoted as if it were a direct quote in Thesaurus of Epigrams (1948) by Edmund Fuller, and One Thousand Sayings of History Presented as Pictures in Prose (1971) by Walter Fogg: "In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions."

 

Catherine II of Russia

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