Metaphysics abstracts the mind from the senses, and the poetic faculty must submerge the whole mind in the senses. Metaphysics soars up to universals….

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury,….

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

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race..

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contra….

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

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth..

Understanding arises through making.

One truly understands only what one can create..

Political Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise..

Imagination is more robust in proportion as reasoning power is weak..

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,….

The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of ….

But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our ….

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 conform to the nature of the men governed..

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute..