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The French may improve their natural wealth and power by the improvement of trade and commerce. We can have no wealth, nor power by consequence, as Europe is now constituted, without the improvement of them, nor in any degree but proportionably to this improvement.

— 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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