Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows with whom to speak and with whom to be silent."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image?"

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

He "who thinks that even the best of writings are but a memorandum for those who know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfe...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"When a man has in his mind a good thick slab of wax, smooth and kneaded to the right consistency, and the impressions that come through the senses are stamped on these tables of the 'heart'--Homer's word hints at the mind's likeness to wax--then the imprints are clear and deep enough to last a l...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 350 B.C.

"It is not necessary to ask whether the soul and its body are one, just as we do not ask about wax and its shape."

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Date: 350 B.C.

"What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind."

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Date: 100

"On this [the soul] he inscribes each one of his conceptions. The first method of inscription is through the senses."

— Aetius (c. 100 A.D.)

Date: 100

"When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon."

— Aetius (c. 100 A.D.)

Date: Mid 5th Century

"The soul therefore was never a writing-tablet bare of inscriptions; she is a tablet that has always been inscribed and is always writing itself and being written on by Nous."

— Proclus (c. 411-85)