The Roman jurisconsults established worship of God as the first and foremost part of the natural law of the gentes. For where there is neither rule of law nor force of arms, and men are accordingly in a state of complete freedom, they can neither enter nor remain in society with others except through fear of a force superior to them all, and, therefore, through fear of a divinity common to all. This fear of divinity is called ‘religion’.

A city divided by religion is either already in ruins or close to it.

Understanding arises through making.

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.

One truly understands only what one can create.

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

Metaphysics abstracts the mind from the senses, and the poetic faculty must submerge the whole mind in the senses. Metaphysics soars up to universals, and the poetic faculty must plunge deep into particulars.

People first feel things without noticing them, then notice them with inner distress and disturbance, and finally reflect on them with a clear mind.

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

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.