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The obligation of submission to both, is discoverable by so clear and so simple an use of our intellectual faculties, that it may be said properly enough to be revealed to us by God; and tho both these laws cannot be said properly to be given by Him, yet our obligation to submit to the civil law is a principal paragraph in the natural law, which he has most manifestly given us.

— Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke The Idea of a Patriot King (1738)

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More quotes by Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

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

Reflections upon Exile (1716)

Our world seems to be, in many respects, the bedlam of every other system of intelligent creatures.

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

Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation (1753)

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.

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