The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

Understanding arises through making

The straight line cannot proceed through the torturous twists of life.

Governments must be conformable to the nature of the governed; governments are even a result of that nature.

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

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.