Date: MS. 1640, 1650

"[T]here is no doubt, if the true doctrine concerning the law of nature, and the properties of a body politic, and the nature of law in general, were perspicuously set down, and taught in the Universities, but that young men, who come thither void of prejudice, and whose minds are yet as white pa...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: MS. 1640, 1650

"For certainly men are not otherwise so unequal in capacity as the evidence is unequal of what is taught by the mathematicians, and what is commonly discoursed of in other books: and therefore if the minds of men were all of white paper, they would almost equally be disposed to acknowledge whatso...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651, 1668

"Potent men, digest hardly any thing that setteth up a power to bridle their affections; and learned men, any thing that discovereth their errors, and thereby lesseneth their authority: whereas the common people's minds, unless they be tainted with dependance on the potent, or scribbled over with...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651, 1668

"All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1653

"Thoughts as a Pen do write upon the Braine; / The Letters which wise Thoughts do write, are plaine."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1653

"Or Thoughts like Pencils draw still to the Life, / And Fancies mixt, as colours give delight."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1653

"So Fancy is the Soul in Poetrie, / And if not good, a Poem ill must be."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1705

"The Soul of Man, before it has received any Impression on it, is compar'd to a Rasa Tabula, by Philosophers, that is, It is as it were, a plain capable of any Impression whatever"

— Coward, William (b. 1656/7, d. in or before 1725)