John Locke Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...

John Locke
The next good quality belonging to a gentleman, is good breeding [manners]. There are two sorts of ill-breeding: the one a sheepish bashfulness, and the other a mis-becoming negligence and disrespect in our carriage; both of which are avoided by duly observing this one rule, not to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly of others.

John Locke
Man being…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.

John Locke
Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself...She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men.

John Locke
The imagination is always restless and suggests a variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this State, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: And 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. He that will impartially survey the Nations of the World, will find so much of the Governments, Religion, and Manners brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that they will have but little Reverence for the Practices which are in use and credit amongst Men.

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 mind ought to examine all the grounds of probability, and upon a due balancing the whole, reject or receive it proportionably to the preponderancy of probability on the one side or the other.

John Locke
He that in the ordinary affairs of life would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration would be sure of nothing in this world but of perishing quickly.

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
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
Of all the ways whereby children are to be instructed, and their manners formed, the plainest, easiest, and most efficacious, is, to set before their eyes the examples of those things you would have them do, or avoid; which, when they are pointed out to them, in the practice of persons within their knowledge, with some reflections on their beauty and unbecomingness, are of more force to draw or deter their imitation, than any discourses which can be made to them.

John Locke
Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.

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
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
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.

John Locke
Enjoin him to play so many hours every day, and look that he do it; and you shall see he will quickly be sick of it; and willing to leave it. By this means making the recreations you dislike a business to him, he will of himself with delight betake himself to those things you would have him do, especially if they be proposed as rewards for having performed the task in that play which is commanded of him.

John Locke
Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.

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
But of all other ideas, it is number, which I think furnishes us with the clearest and most distinct idea of infinity we are capable of.

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
Men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind.

John Locke
Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.

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
The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.

John Locke
Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain.

John Locke