As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging that the pilot is made for the sake of the ship, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political vessel; as to say that kingdoms were instituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount BolingbrokeIt is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount BolingbrokeI think it indisputable that the distance between the intellectual faculties of different men is greater than that between the same faculties in some men and some other animals.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount BolingbrokeIndifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount BolingbrokeWhatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount BolingbrokeThe confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke