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...
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)
Date: 1755
"The sovereign power represents the head; the laws and customs are the brain, the source of the nerves and seat of the understanding, will and senses, of which the Judges and Magistrates are the organs: commerce, industry, and agriculture are the mouth and stomach which prepare the common subsist...
preview | full record— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
Date: 1721, 1722
"With us there is an uniformity of character, as it is all forced: we do not see people as they are, but as they are obliged to appear: in this state of slavery, both of body and mind, it is their fears only that speak, which have but one language, and that not of nature, which expresses herself ...
preview | full record— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
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."
preview | full record— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)
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?"
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1721, 1722
"This prince is, besides, a great magician; he exercises his empire even over the minds of his subjects, and makes them think as he pleases."
preview | full record— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Date: 1721, 1722
"The soul united to a body is continually under its tyrannical power."
preview | full record— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)