John Locke Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

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

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
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
When mathematical men will build systems upon fancy, and not upon demonstration, they are as liable to mistakes as others.

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

John Locke
Set the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business, for it holds in the struggles of the mind, as in those of war, that to think we shall conquer is to conquer.

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
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
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
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
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
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.

John Locke
Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbours but the portraiture.

John Locke
Though the water running in the fountain be every ones, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out?

John Locke
If any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people by his own authority and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government.

John Locke
Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.

John Locke
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.

John Locke
God is the place of spirits, as spaces are the places of bodies.

John Locke
There seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas; even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed, by repeated exercises of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen.

John Locke
To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.

John Locke
He that will make good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation.

John Locke
Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.

John Locke
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.

John Locke
The difference, so observable in men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural faculties, as acquired habits.

John Locke
Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.

John Locke
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.

John Locke
The study of mathematics would show... the necessity there is in reasoning, to separate all the distinct ideas, and to see the habitudes that all those concerned in the present inquiry have to one another, and to lay by those which relate not to the proposition in hand, and wholly to leave them out of the reckoning.

John Locke
Since nothing appears to me to give Children so much becoming Confidence and Behavior, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their Age, as Dancing. I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it.

John Locke