John Locke Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

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.

John Locke
A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.

John Locke
I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.

John Locke
The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.

John Locke
We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can easily be imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers, which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection.

John Locke
General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little room; but they are therefore to be made with the greater care and caution, lest, if we take counterfeit for true, our loss and shame be the greater when our stock comes to a severe scrutiny.

John Locke
The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

John Locke
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.

John Locke
If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him.

John Locke
Every step the mind takes in its progress towards knowledge, makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least.

John Locke
For a man's property is not at all secure, though there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it, between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects, have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.

John Locke
Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others

John Locke
Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge

John Locke
It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.

John Locke
There are a thousand ways to Wealth, but only one way to Heaven.

John Locke
In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts.

John Locke
Merit and good works is the end of man's motion; and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest; for if a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God's rest.

John Locke
Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly: but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them.

John Locke
To measure motion, space is as necessary to be considered as time....[They] are made use of to denote the position of finite: real beings, in respect one to another, in those infinite uniform oceans of duration and space.

John Locke
There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

John Locke
Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into.

John Locke
Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

John Locke
The highest probability amounts not to certainty, without which there can be no true knowledge.

John Locke
When I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reasonable thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world.

John Locke
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.

John Locke
If the Gospel and the Apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity, and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.

John Locke
To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.

John Locke
All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed.

John Locke
As the magistrate has no power to impose by his laws the use of any rites and ceremonies in any church, so neither has he any power to forbid the use of such rites and ceremonies as are already received, approved, and practised by any church; because if he did so, he would destroy the church itself; the end of whose institution is only to worship God with freedom, after its own manner.

John Locke
And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject.

John Locke