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Anything but history, for history must be false.

— Robert Walpole

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Source: To his son, who offered to read history to him. quoted in Walpoliana, 1799, Vol. 1, p. 60, No. 79, quoted in Carlyle's French Revolution, Pt. 1, book. 7, chapter 5, also quoted in Famous Sayings And their Authors, p. 7
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Robert Walpole

The most unrighteous judgment was passed upon me in the House that was ever heard of...against the most positive evidence that it was possible in any case to give. ... I am made a sacrifice to the violence of a party and entirely innocent.

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History

More quotes by Robert Walpole

The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours.

All those men have their price.

Many words are not wanting to show that the particular view of each court occasioned the dangers which affected the public tranquillity; yet the whole is charged to my account. Nor is this sufficient.

It is obvious, that the people of England are at this moment animated against each other, with a spirit of hatred and rancour. It behoves you, in the first place, to find a remedy for these distempers which at present are predominant in the civil constitution.

I dare be bold to affirm that, had the King of France beaten us, as we have done him, he would have been so modest as to have given us better terms than we have gained after all our glorious victories.

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