Date: 1709, 1714

"They wou'd new frame the Human Heart; and have a mighty Fancy to reduce all its Motions, Ballances and Weights, to that one Principle and Foundation of a cool and deliberate Selfishness."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1734

"How shall the Wheel of the Imagination that's continually in motion, be either stop'd or regulated?"

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)

Date: 1748, 1749

"The human body is a machine that winds up its own springs: it is a living image of the perpetual motion."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: w. c. 1759-1791

"And this in some measure accounts why there are some heads so strange and whimsical, without any fixed Ideas at all, some exceedingly heavy and confusd; some working and whirling along with amazing rapidity, depending in a great measure upon the different movements of the machine as it works and...

— Pratt, Jermyn (d. 1791)

Date: w. c. 1759-1791

"should it be granted me then that there is or may be such a machine or Gig in every mans head; that thus works and mills his Ideas, yet it may be questiond perhaps after all, what it is that can give it its first motion."

— Pratt, Jermyn (d. 1791)

Date: w. c. 1759-1791

"I will be the Director of no mans opinion but he who is anatomically acquainted with the processus Zygomaticus, the processus Hyloides, or the processius mammillaris; will easily grant me all this may be performd by the air that is received by the ear, or mouth only; so that it is reasonable to ...

— Pratt, Jermyn (d. 1791)

Date: 1774

"If it were not employed in this, genius must go on like a mere machine, and a person should have no power over it after it were once set in motion."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1785

"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)