Quentin Skinner Quote

I am convinced, in short, that the importance of truth for the kind of historical enquiries I am considering has been much exaggerated. I take this to be a product of the fact that so much of the meta-historical discussion has hinged around the analysis of scientific beliefs. In such cases the question of truth may perhaps be of some interest. But in most of the cases investigated by historians of ideas, the suggestion that we need to consider the truth of the beliefs under examination is, I think, likely to strike the historian as strange.

Visions of Politics (2002) - Interpretation, rationality and truth