Date: 1794

"I have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors [that bolt into the mind of their own accord] with civility, taking care to examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining; and it is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

"Every person of learning is finally his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

"As to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning for himself afterwards."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

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

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

"Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable Creation, yet it is so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death...

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

"Forgetfulness, dumbness, necessity! / In chains of the mind locked up, / Like fetters of ice shrinking together."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1794

"When fibrous contractions succeed other fibrous contractions, the connection is termed 'association'; when fibrous contractions succeed sensorial motions, the connection is termed 'cassation'; when fibrous and sensorial motions reciprocally introduce each other in progressive trains or tribes, i...

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1794

"Whereas a due exercise of the faculties of the mind strengthens and improves those faculties, whether of imagination or recollection; as the exercise of our limbs in dancing or fencing increases the strength and agility of the muscles thus employed."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1794

"If our recollection or imagination be not a repetition of animal movements, I ask, in my turn, What is it? You tell me it consists of images or pictures of things. Where is this extensive canvas hung up? or where are the numerous receptacles in which those are deposited? or to what else in the a...

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1794

"In like manner the irritative ideas suggest to us many other trains or tribes of ideas that are associated with them."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)