Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.

History never repeats itself. Man always does.

One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.

The system of Descartes... seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities. But in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he does not understand.