Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"Even though problems such as these can often be solved without a method and can sometimes perhaps be solved more quickly through good luck than through method, nevertheless they might dim the light of the mind and make it become so habituated to childish and futile pursuits that thereafter it wo...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"So the same light of the mind which enabled them to see (albeit without knowing why) that virtue is preferable to pleasure, the good preferable to the useful, also enabled them to grasp true ideas in philosophy and mathematics, although they were not yet able fully to master such sciences"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1741

"The very Greek Heathens by the Light of Reason were taught to say, [GREEK CHARACTERS], and the Latins, A Jove principium, Musae."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1763, 1765; 1766

"Powers that should spread in Reason's orient ray, / How are they darken'd, and debarr'd the day!"

— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)

Date: 1830

"But mind is not merely this abstractly simple being equivalent to light, which was how it was considered when the simplicity of the soul in contrast to the composite nature of the body was under discussion."

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1830

"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, t...

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1850

"An auxiliar light / Came from my mind, which on the setting sun / Bestowed new splendour"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1949

"Self-consciousness, if the word is to be used at all, must not be described on the hallowed para-optical model, as a torch that illuminates itself by beams of its own light reflected from a mirror in its own insides."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"Mental states and processes are (or are normally) conscious states and processes, and the consciousness which irradiates them can engender no illusions and leaves the door open for no doubts."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"A person's present thinkings, feelings and willings, his perceivings, rememberings and imaginings are intrinsically 'phospherescent'; their existence and their nature are inevitably betrayed to their owner."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)