We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

Had you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our Thoughts, and Notions, had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hotentots that inhabit there: And had the Virginia King Apochancana, been educated in England, he had, perhaps been as knowing a Divine, and as good a Mathematician as any in it. The difference between him, and a more improved English-man, lying barely in this, That the exercise of his Facilities was bounded within the Ways, Modes, and Notions of his own Country, and never directed to any other or farther Enquiries.

Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

Mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard and clear, and will be touched with nothing but strict reasoning.