Date: 1681

"Also the ignorance of what is Equity in their own causes, which Equity not one Man in a thousand ever Studied, and the Lawyers themselves seek not for their Judgments in their own Breasts, but in the precedents of former Judges, as the Antient Judges sought the same, not in their own Reason, but...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1705

"T' enjoy the World's Conveniencies, / Be fam'd in War, yet live in Ease, / Without great Vices, is a vain / Eutopia seated in the Brain."

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

Date: 1705, 1714, 1732

"Laws and Government are to the Political Bodies of Civil Societies, what the Vital Spirits and Life it self are to the Natural Bodies of Animated Creatures"

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

Date: 1705, 1714, 1732

"I believe Man (besides Skin, Flesh, Bones, &c. that are obvious to the Eye) to be a compound of various Passions, that all of then, as they are provoked and come uppermost, govern him by turns, whether he will or no."

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

Date: 1705, 1714, 1732

"How strangely our Passions govern us!"

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

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?"

— 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."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)