Date: 1785
"If different religions be professed in the same country, and the minds of men remain unfettered and unawed by intimidations of law, that religion which is founded in maxims of reason and credibility, will gradually gain over the other to it."
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1786
"Add to this, that, whenever you sell the liberty of a man, you have the power only of alluding to the body: the mind cannot be confined or bound: it will be free, though its mansion be beset with chains."
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: 1788-89
"The former [Platonic philosophy] fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter [Lockean philosophy] clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries he...
preview | full record— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)
Date: February 3, 1788
"The spirit of the Gospel 'proclaims liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound:' but these men rivet the chains of slavery; 'the iron enters into the Negro's soul,' while while his mind is left in all the darkness of ignorance, without one ray of those comforts ...
preview | full record— Agutter, William (1758-835)
Date: 1791
"Your resolution to obey your father I sincerely approve; but do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows; they will sometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: January 19, 1791
"He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against ...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: January 19, 1791
"Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in pro...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: January 19, 1791
"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1791
"His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had he ventured to try, he could at once have snapt asunder."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1793
"The genuine and wholsome state of mind is, to be unloosed from shackles, and to expand every fibre of its frame according to the independent and individual impressions of truth upon that mind."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)