Date: 1793

The extirpation of error "frees us from the influence of those phantoms which before misled us, shows us our true advantage as consisting in independence and integrity, and binds us by the general consent of our fellow citizens to the dictates of reason, more strongly than with fetters of iron."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"We put shackles upon our minds, and dare not trust ourselves at large in the pursuit of truth."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: w. c. 1793? [in MS]

"Love to faults is always blind / Always is to joy inclind / Lawless wingd & unconfind / And breaks all chains from every mind."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: w. c. 1793? [in MS]

"Deceit to secresy confind / Lawful cautious & refind / To every thing but interest blind / And forges fetters for the mind."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1793

"Exulting Reason from her bondage springs, / Claims Heav'n's wide range, and spreads her eagle wings; / While Superstition, lodg'd with bats and owls, / With Horror, and the hopeless maniac, howls."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1794

"In every voice: in every ban, / The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1794

"My heart is in your chains, and I must follow."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1794

"Forgetfulness, dumbness, necessity! / In chains of the mind locked up, / Like fetters of ice shrinking together."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1794

"And as these irritative ideas make up a part of the chain of our waking thoughts, introducing other ideas that engage our attention, though themselves are unattended to, we find it very difficult to investigate by what steps many of our hourly trains of ideas gain their admittance."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1794

"How thoughts to thoughts are link'd with viewless chains, / Tribes leading tribes, and trains pursuing trains."

— Bilsborrow, Dewhurst (fl. 1794)