Date: 1641

"You may say that you occupy the citadel in your brain and there receive whatever messages are transmitted by the animal spirits which move through the nerves, and sense-perception thus occurs there, where you dwell, despite the fact that it is said to occur throughout the body."

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1658

"The soul seems to be like a little flame or a most attenuated kind of fire, which thrives or remains kindled while the animal lives, since if it no longer thrives or is put out, the animal dies."

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1747

"The figures, which must actuate her, remain / As yet quite uncollected in the brain; / Exterior objects have not furnish' yet / Th' ideal stores which Age is sure to get."

— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)

Date: 1747

"But the wild passions, once broke loose, to check / Surpass'd his pow'r, or the slack'd reins recall."

— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)

Date: 1747

"And where's the boasted liberty of man? / Chang'd are his lords indeed; and tyrant Lust / Usurps the just supremacy of Heav'n."

— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)

Date: 1777

"The minds of the negroes are contracted; because slavery destroys all the springs of the soul."

— Raynal, Guillaume Thomas (1713-1796)

Date: 2005

"Many other examples can easily be found since this version of social theory has become the default position of our mental software that takes into consideration the following."

— Latour, Bruno (b. 1947)

Date: 2005

"They [the vehicles that transport individuality, subjectivity, personhood, and interiority] could be called 'subjectifiers', 'personnalizers', or 'individualisers', but I prefer the more neutral term of 'plug-ins', borrowing this marvelous metaphor from our new life on the Web."

— Latour, Bruno (b. 1947)

Date: 2005

"Every competence, deep down in the silence of your interiority, has first to come from the outside, to be slowly sunk in and deposited into some well-constructed cellar whose doors have then to be carefully sealed."

— Latour, Bruno (b. 1947)

Date: 2005

"Interiorities are built in the same complicated way as Horus's chamber in the center of the pyramid of Cheops."

— Latour, Bruno (b. 1947)