Date: February 1792

"It appears as if the tide of mental faculties flowed as far as it could in certain channels, and then forsook its course, and arose in others. How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses to flow!"

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1793

"The most palpable of all classes of knowledge is that I am, personally considered, but an atom in the ocean of mind."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

"As those which contribute to circulate the blood, and to perform the various secretions; as well as the associate tribes and trains of ideas, which contribute to furnish the perpetual streams of our dreaming imaginations."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1830

"No idle whims, no vapours fill'd her brain, / But Prudence for her youthful guide she took, / And Goodness, which no earthly vice could stain, / Dwelt in her mind; she was ne proud I ween or vain."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)