“It is in minds of middling vigour and middling capacity that are born erroneous opinions, for they follow the apparent truth of their first impressions and do have a case for interpreting as simplicity and animal-stupidity the sight of people like us who stick to the old ways, fixing on us who are not instructed in such matters by study.”
- Michel de Montaigne [I.54]
“The beginnings of religions, republics, and kingdoms must always contain in themselves some goodness through which they may regain their early prestige and their early expansion. And because in the course of time that goodness is corrupted, if something does not come about to bring it back to its proper limits, it will, of necessity, kill that body.”
- Machiavelli [Discourses, III.1]
