Top 100 Quotes About John Locke
#1. John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!
Bertrand Russell
#2. Men always forget that human happiness is a disposition of mind and not a condition of circumstances. - John Locke
Robert Jackson Bennett
#3. John Locke first began maintaining a commonplace book in 1652, during
Steven Johnson
#4. Ever since the end of Medieval feudalism, and the writings of John Locke, we have understood the importance of being able to buy and sell one's own property, including books and watches, both for reasons of economics and liberty.
Marvin Ammori
#5. when John Locke published his celebrated Letters concerning toleration in the aftermath of England's Glorious Revolution, he still excluded Roman Catholics and atheists from his proposals, on the grounds that they were enemies to the English state.
Diarmaid MacCulloch
#6. There is no right to a job or a wage rate, but there is a right to move from one country to another in search of a better life. This is the point of view of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and other great supporters of the natural rights tradition in America.
Alex Tabarrok
#7. The myth that the founding of American Republic was based on the philosophy of John Locke could only have been maintained, because the history of Leibniz's influence was suppressed.
Robert Trout
#8. But no moral philosopher, from Aristotle to Aquinas, to John Locke and Adam Smith, divorced economics from a set of moral ends or held the production of wealth to be an end in itself; rather it was seen as a means to the realization of virtue, a means of leading a civilized life.
Daniel Bell
#9. The idea of formulated 'rights ... comes not from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson ... but from the canon law of the Catholic Church.
Thomas E. Woods Jr.
#10. Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.
Thomas Jefferson
#11. The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by examining how Locke's philosophy steered Thomas Jefferson, for example.
Robert Trout
#12. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.
Simon Mainwaring
#13. Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.
John Locke
#14. Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank.
William John Locke
#15. He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss
John Locke
#16. In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts.
John Locke
#17. Since nothing appears to me to give Children so much becoming Confidence and Behavior, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their Age, as Dancing. I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it.
John Locke
#18. The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its Author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting!
John Locke
#19. Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbours but the portraiture.
John Locke
#20. Where there is no desire, there will be no industry.
John Locke
#21. How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?
John Locke
#22. Every man's first declaration of love is bathos
the zenith of his passion connoting perhaps the nadir of his intelligence.
William John Locke
#23. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it.
John Locke
#24. I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.
John Locke
#25. [Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.
John Locke
#26. Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be us'd in the correction of children, and that only in the cases of extremity, after all gently ways have been try'd, and proved unsuccessful; which, if well observ'd, there will very seldom be any need of blows.
John Locke
#27. For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.
John Locke
#28. Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.
John Locke
#29. We are all a sort of chameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us; nor is it to be wonder'd at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear.
John Locke
#30. But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression
John Locke
#31. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.
John Locke
#32. Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.
John Locke
#33. So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
John Locke
#34. Any human love a man gets he can make fill his life. It's like the grain of mustard-seed.
William John Locke
#35. Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.
John Locke
#36. The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.
John Locke
#37. Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption: therefore, always, when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change.
John Locke
#38. Revelation in matters where reason cannot judge, or but probably, ought to be hearkened to. First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.
John Locke
#39. There are some Men of one, some but of two Syllogisms, and no more; and others that can but advance one step farther.
John Locke
#40. The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.
John Locke
#41. Men's happiness or misery is [for the] most part of their own making.
John Locke
#42. A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a Happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little better for anything else.
John Locke
#43. So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
John Locke
#45. Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.
John Locke
#46. There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
John Locke
#47. 'Tis true that governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys a share of protection should pay out of his estate his proportion of the maintenance of it.
John Locke
#48. If you punish him for what he sees you practise yourself, he ... will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself.
John Locke
#49. Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into.
John Locke
#50. He that denies any of the doctrines that Christ has delivered, to be true, denies him to be sent from God, and consequently to be the Messiah; and so ceases to be a Christian.
John Locke
#51. Any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight, which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the idea we call love.
John Locke
#52. To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.
John Locke
#53. It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions.
John Locke
#54. The only cure for loss of illusions is fresh illusions, more illusions, and always illusions.
William John Locke
#55. New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common.
John Locke
#56. I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
John Locke
#58. There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd Doctrines, as to guard them round about with Legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefin'd Words.
John Locke
#60. A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.
John Locke
#61. False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.
John Locke
#62. In the beginning, all the world was America.
John Locke
#63. The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
John Locke
#64. When we find out an Idea, by whose Intervention we discover the Connexion of two others, this is a Revelation from God to us, by the voice of Reason.
John Locke
#65. Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
John Locke
#66. Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.
John Locke
#67. Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge.
John Locke
#68. Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself ... She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men.
John Locke
#69. How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.
John Locke
#70. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
John Locke
#71. He that will have his son have respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.
John Locke
#72. It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.
John Locke
#73. As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellencies, what are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch, only by repeated actions.
John Locke
#74. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
John Locke
#75. Children generally hate to be idle; all the care then is that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them
John Locke
#76. Don't let the things you don't have prevent you from using what you do have.
John Locke
#77. Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.
John Locke
#78. The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.
William John Locke
#79. It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.
John Locke
#80. Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.
John Locke
#81. A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security.
John Locke
#82. Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition, or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct.
John Locke
#83. The business of education is not to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them - capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to it.
John Locke
#84. Defects and weakness in men's understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds; I am apt to think, the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them.
John Locke
#85. Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool?
John Locke
#86. No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
John Locke
#87. Now, I appeal to the consciences of those who persecute, wound, torture, and kill other men on the excuse of 'religion', whether they do this in a spirit of friendship and kindness.
John Locke
#88. Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.
John Locke
#90. Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.
John Locke
#92. It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.
John Locke
#93. Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.
John Locke
#94. Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others
John Locke
#95. One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
John Locke
#96. The only thing we are naturally afraid of is pain, or loss of pleasure. And because these are not annexed to any shape, colour, or size of visible objects, we are frighted of none of them, till either we have felt pain from them, or have notions put into us that they will do us harm.
John Locke
#97. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.
John Locke
#98. The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.
John Locke
#99. I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly: and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason.
John Locke
#100. All wealth is the product of labor.
John Locke
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