Date: 1731

"For as the Mind of God, which is the Archetypal Intellect, is that whereby he always actually comprehends himself, and his own Fecundity, or the Extent of his own Infinite Goodness and Power; that is, the Possibility of all things; So all Created Intellects being being certain Ectypal Models, or...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1733-1735

"Various rude Arts the untaught Ancients knew / To fix Ideas e'er they fled away, / And Images of Thought to Sight convey. / Brass, Wax, or Wood the Characters retain'd, / Some liv'd on Slates, and some the Canvas stain'd; / Some trac'd in Iv'ry, or engrav'd on Stone, / Or sunk in Clay, e're Bi...

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1765

"If all [the mind] had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths"

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1992

"Even more important to David than the very natural worry that his wife and his son might grow fond of one another was the intoxicating feeling that he had a blank consciousness to work with, and it gave him great pleasure to knead this yielding clay with his artistic thumbs."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)