Innate Ideas Quotes

Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave, having no conscience or innate science.

This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view.

Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

The common Notions of Liberty are not from School Divines, but from Nature.

Every Man being conscious to himself, That he thinks, and that which his Mind is employ'd about whilst thinking, being the Ideas, that are there, 'tis past doubt, that Men have in their Minds several Ideas, such as are those expressed by the words, Whiteness, Hardness, Sweetness, Thinking, Motion, Man, Elephant, Army, Drunkenness, and others: It is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them? I know it is a received Doctrine, That Men have native Ideas, and original Characters stamped upon their Minds, in their very first Being.

Knowledge of ideal beauty is not to be acquired. It is born with us. Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; theyare truly himself.

The fundamental proposition of the apriorist theory is that knowledge is made up of two sorts of elements, which cannot be reduced into one another, and which are like two distinct layers superimposed one upon the other.

I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

But unfortunately Locke treated ideas of reflection as if they were another class of objects of contemplation beside ideas of sensation.

I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience. That's why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.

An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas and the truth of prophecy has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover and with the conviction of a geometrician.