Thomas Hobbes - Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

 Thomas Hobbes
   1588 - 1679
Thoughts from 17th-century western philosophy   

* The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.
* That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
* No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
* All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
* A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

* He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.
* Only the present has a right to exist because the past is only a memory and the future has no existence.