"From my Arab teachers I have learnt one thing, to have reason as my guide, while you are dazzled by the show of authority and led by a halter. For what is authority to be called, but a halter? As the brute beasts, indeed, are led by the halter, and have no idea by what they are led or why, but only follow the rope that holds them, so also the authority of writers leads not a few of you into danger, tied and bound by brutish credulity."

"The present generation has this ingrained weakness, that it thinks that nothing discovered by the moderns is worthy to be received—the result of this is that if I wanted to publish anything of my own invention I should attribute it to someone else, and say, “Someone else said this, not I.” Therefore (that I may not wholly be robbed of a hearing) it was a certain great man that discovered all my ideas, not I."