Date: March 24, 1659

"[Oliver Cromwell's] body was well compact and strong, his stature under 6 foot (I believe about two inches), his head so shaped as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts."

— Maidston, John

Date: March 24, 1659

"[Oliver Cromwell's] temper exceeding fiery, as I have known, but the flame of it kept down, for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had."

— Maidston, John

Date: March 24, 1659

"A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was."

— Maidston, John

Date: October 15, 1692

"[Locke] will allow no idea innate but such as a man brings coined in his mind like a shilling."

— King, William (1650-1729)

Date: 1696

"Imagine two clocks or watches which agree perfectly ... Put now the soul and the body in place of these two clocks; their accordance may be brought about by one of these three ways."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: May 16, 1699

"All others have a right to be followed as far as I, i.e. as far as the evidence of what they say convinces; and of that my own understanding alone must be judge for me, and nothing else."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1699

"I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil, applying the Latin word Spiritus, from whence Spirit is derived, to the Soul as a thinking Thing, without excluding Materiality out of it. To which your Lordship replies,*That Cicero, in his Tusculan Q...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: March 16, 1696/7; 1708

"I fansy I pretty well guess what it is that some Men find mischievous in your 'Essay': 'Tis opening the Eyes of the Ignorant, and rectifying the Methods of Reasoning, which perhaps may undermine some received Errors, and so abridge the Empire of Darkness; wherein, though the Subject wander deplo...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1708, 1737, 1742

"Je ne suis nullement pour la tabula rasa de Aristote, & il y a quelque chose de solide dans ce que Platon appelloit le reminiscence."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1708, 1714

"The Human Mind and Body are both of 'em naturally subject to Commotions: and as there are strange Ferments in the Blood, which in many Bodys occasion an extraordinary discharge; so in Reason too, there are heterogeneous Particles which must be thrown off by Fermentation."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)