John Arbuthnot

John Arbuthnot in 1723

John Arbuthnot (or Dr Arbuthnot; 1667 – 1735) was a Scottish physician, satirist and polymath, best remembered for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club (where he inspired both Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels book III and Alexander Pope's Peri Bathos, Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus, and possibly The Dunciad), and for inventing the figure of John Bull.

Quotes

  • I exhort all People, gentle and simple, men, women and children, to buy, to read, to extol, these labours of mine. Let them not fear to defend every article; for I will bear them harmless. I have arguments good store, and can easily confute, either logically, theologically, or metaphysically, all those who oppose me.
    • Quoted as one of the "Prelude of Mottoes" in Robert Southey's The Doctor, &c. (1835) vol. 3, p. ix
  • All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
    • Quoted in Richard Garnett, Life of Emerson (1888) ch. 7
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