John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

43 Sourced Quotes

View all John Locke Quotes
Truth scarce ever yet carried it by Vote any where at its first appearance: New Opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other Reason, but because they are not already common.

John Locke
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

John Locke
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

John Locke
Nobody is under an obligation to know every thing. Knowledge and science in general is the business only of those who are at ease and leisure.

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
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
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
Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties.

John Locke
For number applies itself to men, angels, actions, thoughts; everything that either doth exist, or can be imagined.

John Locke
There are very few lovers of truth, for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so.

John Locke
Probability is the appearance of agreement upon fallible proofs.

John Locke
Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses.

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
The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them.

John Locke
General propositions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians: much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children.

John Locke
Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy.

John Locke
Since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas … the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification … has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than another to signify any idea.

John Locke
All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

John Locke
It is one thing, to shew a Man that he is in an Error; and another, to put him in possession of Truth.

John Locke
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

John Locke
Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight: and men may be as positive in error as in truth.

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

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
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