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John Locke

129 quotes

“The three great things that govern mankind are reason, passion and superstition. The first governs a few, the two last share the bulk of mankind and possess them in their turns. But superstition most powerfully produces the greatest mischief.”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1681 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal entry (16 May 1681), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 200
“Wit and good nature meeting in a fair young lady as they do in you make the best resemblance of an angel that we know; and he that is blessed with the conversation and friendship of a person so extraordinary enjoys all that remains of paradise in this world.”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1682 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mary Clarke (7 May 1682), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 221
“But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1689 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
“The good King of France desires only that you would take his word and let him be quiet till he has got the West Indies into his hands and his grandson well established in Spain, and then you may be sure you shall be as safe as he will let you be in your religion, property and trade, to all which who can be such an infidel as not to believe him a great friend?”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1701 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Peter King (5 April 1701), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 452
“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1703 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703)
“This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.”
John Locke (1632–1704) said by 1704 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Hand Book : Caution and Counsels" in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (15 December 1843) by Horace Mann, p. 371
“Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.”
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“Discourse of Port de Set with P. & Mr. [blank] at Petit Paris, & the teaching biding to cheat the Hugenots: Nulla fides servanda cum Hereticis, nisi satis validi sunt ad se defendendos [faith need not be kept with heretics].”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1675 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal entry (25 January 1676), quoted in John Lough (ed.), Locke's Travels in France 1675-1679 (Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 20.
“If Papists can be supposed to be as good subjects as others, they may be equally tolerated... If all subjects should be equally countenanced, & imployd by the Prince. the Papist[s] have an equall title.”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1667 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Unknown text by John Locke reveals roots of 'foundational democratic ideas'” Alison Flood, The Guardian (3 Sept. 2019), manuscript titled “Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with others” (written 1667-8)
“For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven.”
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“This life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life.”
John Locke (1632–1704) first seen 1704 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Anthony Collins (23 August 1704), in The Works of John Locke, Vol. X (London, 1823), p. 298; quoted by William Julius Mickle in Voltain in the Shades (London, 1770), p. 7
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
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“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
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“There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.”
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“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
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“Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.”
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“The boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men.”
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“Since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas ... the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification ... has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than another to signify any idea.”
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“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.”
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“He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but lead himself and others into errors? And he that designedly does it, ought to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge.”
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“I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.”
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“He that knows anything, knows this, in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance.”
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“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.”
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“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.”
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“Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.”
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“All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.”
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“To understand political power aright, and derive from it its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.”
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“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, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
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“Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it”
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“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 tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”
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“Freedom of Men under Government is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; a Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man: as Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.”
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“This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.”
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“Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. Thus no Body has any Right to but himself.”
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“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 laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.”
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“Government has no other end than the preservation of property.”
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“Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”
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“If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?”
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“And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...”
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“As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to...”
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“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.”
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“To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man...”
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“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.”
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“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.”
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“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.”
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“Let me give two cautions. 1) The one is, that you keep them to the practice of what you would have grow into a habit with them, by kind words, and gentle admonitions, rather as minding them of what they forget, than by harsh rebukes and chiding, as if they were wilfully guilty. 2) Another thing you are to take care of, is, not to endeavour to settle too many habits at once, lest by variety you confound them, and so perfect none. When constant custom has made any one thing easy and natural to 'em, and they practice it without reflection, you may then go on to another.”
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“Let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures of breeding daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.”
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“Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.”
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“We are all a sort of camelions, 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.”
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“Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.”
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“A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation.”
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