John Locke Quotes
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Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.
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That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.
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What worries you, masters you.
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Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.
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Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
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Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.
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Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.
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All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.
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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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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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[Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.
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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.
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It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.
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When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
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The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.
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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.
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..every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. .... The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.
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Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.
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The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.
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The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
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The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
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Truth, like gold, is not less so for being newly brought out of the mine.
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Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.
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No peace and security among mankind-let alone common friendship-can ever exist as long as people think that governments get their authority from God and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.