I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.

The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true and assured I have gotten either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.

It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.

The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body.

In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought; for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.

I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen