A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.
Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
Desire to know why, and how curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.
The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .
No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.
Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.
Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.
And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.
I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way beset with those that contend, on one side for too great Liberty, and on the other side for too much Authority, ’tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded.
Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?
If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.
But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.
And Beasts that have Deliberation, must necessarily also have Will .
A naturall foole that could never learn by heart the order of numerall words, as one, two, and three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it strikes.
But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.
Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.
There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here.
Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.
Of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End, either by attaining, or by giving over.