John Locke Quotes
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Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature.
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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.
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'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.
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Where there is no property there is no injustice.
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Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
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Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.
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The most precious of all possessions is power over ourselves.
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What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?
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No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
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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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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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The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.
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Don't let the things you don't have prevent you from using what you do have.
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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. The People alone can appoint the Form of the Commonwealth, which is by Constituting the Legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be.
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To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.
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In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.
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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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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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The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone.
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Every man must some time or other be trusted to himself.
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Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.
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The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe.
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Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.
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In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity.