John Locke Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

Let me give two cautions. 1) The one is, that you keep them to the practice of what you would have grow into a habit with them, by kind words, and gentle admonitions, rather as minding them of what they forget, than by harsh rebukes and chiding, as if they were wilfully guilty. 2) Another thing you are to take care of, is, not to endeavour to settle too many habits at once, lest by variety you confound them, and so perfect none. When constant custom has made any one thing easy and natural to 'em, and they practice it without reflection, you may then go on to another.

John Locke
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

John Locke
To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man…

John Locke
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.

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

John Locke
Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.

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

John Locke
If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?

John Locke
He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss

John Locke
The native and untaught suggestions of inquisitive children do often offer things, that may set a considering man's thoughts on work. And I think there is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education.

John Locke
Man…hath by nature a power…to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate—against the injuries and attempts of other men.

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
A blind fortuitous concourse of atoms, not guided by an understanding agent.

John Locke
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.

John Locke
Another thing wherein they shew their love of dominion, is, their desire to have things to be theirs: They would have propriety and possession, pleasing themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right that they thereby have, to dispose of them as they please. He that has not observ's these two humours working very betimes in children, has taken little notice of their actions: And he who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life, are not early to be weeded out, and contrary habits introduc'd, neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man.

John Locke
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.

John Locke
When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success...

John Locke
The parts of pure space are immovable, which follows from their inseparability; motion being nothing but change of distance between any two things; but this cannot be between parts that are inseparable; which therefore must needs be at perpetual rest one amongst other.

John Locke
The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, take notice, also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together... which, by inadvertency, we apt afterward to talk of and condier as one simple idea.

John Locke