Date: 1536

"For just as when through the mind and understanding men grasp a knowledge of things, and from this are said 'to know,' this is the source of the word 'knowledge,' so also when they have a sense of divine judgment, as a witness joined to them, which does not allow them to hide their sins from bei...

— Calvin, John (1509-1564)

Date: 1644, 1647

"In later years the mind is no longer a total slave to the body, and does not refer everything to it."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1665

"There is no passion in which love of self rules so despotically as love, and we are always more inclined to sacrifice the loved one's tranquillity than to lose our own."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1704

"By Arguments they could not convince me, for I was able to show greater absurdities in their Religion than they could prove in mine; and particularly, in their Doctrine of Transubstantiation; Against which I argu'd several ways: As, First from the Testimony of our Senses , viz. of seeing, feelin...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)

Date: 1704

"Thus the belief of Transubstantiation is inconsistent with the Belief of these Miracles; for if we believe them we must allow the Testimony of Sense to be a sufficient proof of them; But if we believe Transubstantiation we must renounce our Senses , and deny them to be a certain proof of any thi...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)

Date: 1704

"For it is liable to many of the same absurdities with the Romish Doctrine, about the Eucharist; First, because it denies the certainty of our Senses in the proper objects, and consequently destroys their great Evidence of the Christian Religion, from the Miracles wrought in confirmation of it, w...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)

Date: 1704

"The Natural Power of Conscience, which reproves and torments a Man for the heinous Crimes he has committed, tho' the Person be above the fear of human Punishment, or the Crime be committed so secretly, as to escape all natural means of discovery; in which Cases Conscience by its Sentence does, a...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)

Date: 1748, 1750

"l'interêt est le plus grande monarque de la Terre" [Self-interest is the strongest monarch in the world]

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1748, 1749

"If reason is the slave of depraved, or distracted sense, how then can it be expected, that at that time it should be governor?"

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"It is ridiculous to exclaim against the dominion of the will. For one order which it gives, a hundred times does it come under the yoke."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)