We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.

Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminishes freedom.

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?

Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us.

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.