Date: 1748, 1754

"These Objects, or the Images of them, passing in review before the Mind, do, by a necessary Law of our Nature, call forth another and nobler Set of Affections, as Admiration, Esteem, Love, Honour, Gratitude, Benevolence, and others of the like Tribe."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1810

"--Pity, of every generous heart the guest, / As that which dares each colder code refute, / And justifies the ways of man to brute?"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1810

"Had Bethlehem's star, of humble swains the guide; / Of souls, unclouded with pedantick pride; / On thee benighted, beamed, with friendly ray, / With all the light of evangelick day; / Ideas, in thy brain, had held no dance / Of anarchy, thou citizen of France!"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1902

"Looking back upon our own thought, we observe no Subject, like an admiral on the bridge of his flagship, dictating and controlling, some man above the man or in the man; we only note a process of development which requires no such assumption."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1902

"Shall we insist that the brain is to be isolated like a leper, that with it alone no permanent and predicable modifications follow from activity, though in both instances the effects are precisely similar and are produced in exactly the same manner?"

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: September 2, 2011

"When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The 'will' in willpower is not some mysterious 'free will,' a ghost in the machine that can do as it pleases, but a part of the machine itself."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: February 21, 2019

"What, in place of these sentences, marched in the brains of previous generations?"

— Lockwood, Patricia