Giambattista Vico

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves. ”

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute. ”

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race. ”