Giambattista Vico

"The power to create law is the highest power that peoples can exercise."

"Hope sustained by reason and virtue is the source of perseverance."

"The ancients were not more ignorant but differently wise than the moderns."

"The desire to understand is as fundamental to humans as the desire to survive."

"True friendship is built upon mutual respect and shared commitment to virtue."

"The cycles of history teach that what rises must eventually fall."

"Imagination, more than reason, governs the actions of ordinary people."

"The health of a society depends upon the health of its fundamental institutions."

"In dreams and visions, the mind reveals truths that waking reason cannot see."

"History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul."

"The natural desire of good men is knowledge."

"We cannot know anything with certainty because of the weakness of our minds."

"Verum et factum convertuntur - truth and fact are interchangeable."

"The course of the institutions of the nations had to be, in some sense, a cycle."

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things."

"Prudence sees the same divine providence in both nature and in the world."

"God has made men capable of knowing."

"The understanding is improved by knowledge, as the body by labour."

"Divine providence has ordained that this world of nations shall be made by the inhabitants themselves."

"The world has been created in time by God through eternal principles."

"Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class or people."

"Men are naturally inclined to believe in something higher than themselves."

"The most difficult of all things is to see what is plainly before one's eyes."

"Language is the repository of human understanding."

"To know oneself, one must know the history of one's people."

"The human will is capable of both creating and destroying."

"Nations pass through ages of gods, heroes, and men."

"Imagination is the beginning of creation."

"The laws of nations are written in the nature of peoples."

"Fear and wonder are the sources of religious thought."