Date: December 1790

"Will Mr Burke be at the trouble to inform us, how far we are to go back to discover the rights of men, since the light of reason is such a fallacious guide that none but fools trust to its cold investigation?"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The business of education in this case, is only to conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper pole; yet after laying precept upon precept, without allowing a child to acquire judgement itself, parents expect them to act in the same manner by this borrowed fallacious light, as if they had illumina...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793

In a just society "understanding would convert into a real power, no longer an ignis fatuus, shining and expiring by turns, and leading us into sloughs of sophistry, false science and specious mistake"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"Mind will frequently burst forth, but its appearance will be like the corruscations of the meteor, not like the mild illumination of the sun"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"Their result will be thick darkness of the mind, timidity, servility, hypocrisy."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

"It [Christianity] has put the whole orbit of reason into shade."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)