John Locke Quotes
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Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge. The great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.
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Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
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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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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.
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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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Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.
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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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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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Knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.
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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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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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Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.
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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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In the beginning, all the world was America.
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Men's happiness or misery is [for the] most part of their own making.
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Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.
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Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
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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.
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It is labour indeed that puts the difference on everything.
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Success in fighting means not coming at your opponent the way he wants to fight you.
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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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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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Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.
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If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands.