John Locke - Mind Quotes

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This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

John Locke
It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.

John Locke
Untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity.

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
For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on.

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
Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them.

John Locke
Defects and weakness in men's understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds; I am apt to think, the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them.

John Locke
Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.

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 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
For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.

John Locke
Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them...with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society and that general fairness which cements mankind.

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
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
These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.

John Locke
Every man carries about him a touchstone, if he will make use of it, to distinguish substantial gold from superficial glitterings, truth from appearances. And indeed the use and benefit of this touchstone, which is natural reason, is spoiled and lost only by assuming prejudices, overweening presumption, and narrowing our minds.

John Locke
The foundations on which several duties are built, and the foundations of right and wrong from which they spring, are not perhaps easily to be let into the minds of grown men, not us'd to abstract their thoughts from common received opinions. Much less are children capable of reasonings from remote principles. They cannot conceive the force of long deductions. The reasons that move them must be obvious, and level to their thoughts, and such as may be felt and touched. But yet, if their age, temper, and inclination be consider'd, they will never want such motives as may be sufficient to convince them.

John Locke
If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us farther than at first, perhaps, we should have imagined.

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

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
Inuring children gently to suffer some degrees of pain without shrinking, is a way to gain firmness to their minds, and lay a foundation for courage and resolution in the future part of their lives.

John Locke
Children have as much mind to shew that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please.

John Locke
A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

John Locke
The first step to get this noble and manly steadiness, is... carefully keep children from frights of all kinds, when they are young.... Instances of such who in a weak timorous mind, have borne, all their whole lives through, the effects of a fright when they were young, are every where to be seen, and therefore as much as may be to be prevented.

John Locke
When by these steps he has got resolution enough not to be deterr'd from what he ought to do, by the apprehension of danger; when fear does not, in sudden or hazardous occurrences, decompose his mind, set his body a-trembling, and make him unfit for action, or run away from it, he has then the courage of a rational creature: and such an hardiness we should endeavour by custom and use to bring children to, as proper occasions come in our way.

John Locke
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.

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
None of the things they learn, should ever be made a burthen to them, or impos's on them as a task. Whatever is so proposed, presently becomes irksome; the mind takes an aversion to it, though before it were a thing of delight or indifferency. Let a child but be ordered to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has or has not a mind to it; let this be but requir'd of him as a duty, wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and see whether he will not soon be weary of any play at this rate. Is it not so with grown men?

John Locke
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.

John Locke