The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.
Giambattista VicoPeople first feel things without noticing them, then notice them with inner distress and disturbance, and finally reflect on them with a clear mind.
Giambattista VicoPolitical Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise.
Giambattista VicoGovernments must be conformable to the nature of the governed; governments are even a result of that nature.
Giambattista VicoBut the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called "Sympathetic Nature.
Giambattista Vico