John Locke Quotes
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He that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either go or stay, as he best likes; though his preference be determined to stay, by the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging.
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He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it.
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There are a thousand ways to Wealth, but only one way to Heaven.
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As children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices.
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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.
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Laws provide, as much as ispossible that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others. They do not guard them from thenegligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves.
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In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.
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In the beginning, all the world was America.
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The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, take notice, also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together... which, by inadvertency, we apt afterward to talk of and condier as one simple idea.
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It is labour indeed that puts the difference on everything.
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Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler.
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Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
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Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
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It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.
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If pains be to be taken to give him a manly air and assurance betimes, it is chiefly as a fence to his virtue when he goes into the world under his own conduct.
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Where there is no desire, there will be no industry.
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Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.
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When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie.
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Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.
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The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it and from thence penet into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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Power to do good is the true and lawful act of aspiring; for good thoughts (though God accept them), yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground.
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The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.
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Success in fighting means not coming at your opponent the way he wants to fight you.
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The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.