John Locke Quotes
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I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
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The business of education is not to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them - capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to it.
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Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
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I pretend not to teach, but to inquire.
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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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Revolt is the right of the people.
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He that denies any of the doctrines that Christ has delivered, to be true, denies him to be sent from God, and consequently to be the Messiah; and so ceases to be a Christian.
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Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.
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I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.
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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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To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.
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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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The Ideas of primary Qualities of Bodies, are Resemblances of them, and their Patterns do really exist in the Bodies themselves; but the Ideas, produced in us by these Secondary Qualities, have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our Ideas, existing in the Bodies themselves. They are in Bodies, we denominate from them, only a Power to produce those Sensations in us: And what is Sweet, Blue or Warm in Idea, is but the certain Bulk, Figure, and Motion of the insensible parts in the Bodies themselves, which we call so.
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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 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.
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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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The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
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Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.
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He that will make good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation.
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The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.
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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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Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.
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The necessity of pursuing true happiness is the foundation of all liberty- Happiness, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are capable of.
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If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.