John Locke Quotations

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

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.

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

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 the better for anything else.

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.

Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.

To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.

The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.

Where there is no property there is no injustice.

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.

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.

It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach.

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.

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

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.

Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.

Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.

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.

Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.

Man... hath by nature a power .... to preserve his property - that is, his life, liberty, and estate - against the injuries and attempts of other men.

Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses.

Nobody is going to let anybody's children play on something that is unsafe. There is just no way.

Our Savior's great rule, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, is such a fundamental truth for the regulating of human society, that, by that alone, one might without difficulty determine all the cases and doubts in social morality.

We just want to show the people of this town what the benefits are.

There being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species should be equal amongst one another without subordination or subjection

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

It is so vital to everybody who has a stake in the downtown. It is vital to anyone who lives here. It is going to put us on the map.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond experience. (An Essay concerning Human Understanding.)

If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender

The great question (about power) is who should have it

Every man must some time or other be trusted to himself.

He would be laughed at, that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not have much better success, who shall endeavour, at that age, to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory.

Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.

Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly: but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them.

The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.

The first step to get this noble and manly steadiness, is... carefully keep children from frights of all kinds, when they are young. ...Instances of such who in a weak timorous mind, have borne, all their whole lives through, the effects of a fright when they were young, are every where to be seen, and therefore as much as may be to be prevented.

Untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity.

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

All men by nature are equal in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

Memory is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which after imprinting have disappeared, or have been laid aside out of sight.

Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others

It is labour indeed that puts the difference on everything.

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

Since the great foundation of fear is pain, the way to harden and fortify children against fear and danger is to accustom them to suffer pain.

Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain.

Curiosity should be as carefully cherish'd in children, as other appetites suppress'd.

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.

It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.

To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.

If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him.

As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivated, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.

It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.

Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.

Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool?

[H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

Set the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business, for it holds in the struggles of the mind, as in those of war, that to think we shall conquer is to conquer.

These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.

Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.

God, when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man.

Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.

Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge

Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.

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

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.

Certain subjects yield a general power that may be applied in any direction and should be studied by all.

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.

The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.

I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses... 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.

Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.

To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.

There are two sides, two players. One is light, the other is dark.

With books we stand on the shoulders of giants.

When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success...

Don't let the things you don't have prevent you from using what you do have.

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject.

Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them...with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society and that general fairness which cements mankind.

The great art to learn much is to undertake a little at a time.