Selected John Locke Quotes
John Locke- John Locke FRS (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher and physician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers. He is commonly known as the "father of liberalism". He is considered as one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon. He is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy.
His writings were an influence to Voltaire & Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. He was also an influence to American Revolutionaries. The United States Declaration of Independence was affected by his contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory. On an international basis, his political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law.
His theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self. It figures prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. He postulates that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate, or "tabula rasa". Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception, a concept now known as empiricism (Source: Wikipedia).
Selected Jo Quotes:
“This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing are thought to understand every thing too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking 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, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men’s opinions are superficial and confused.”
― John Locke, The Empiricists: Locke: Concerning Human Understanding; Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge & 3 Dialogues; Hume: Concerning Human Understanding & Concerning Natural Religion
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.”
― Locke John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Volume II
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”
― John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas, Power
“Who are we to tell anyone what they can or can't do?”
John Locke, Life
“Personal Identity depends on Consciousness not on Substance.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Life
“Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.”
John Locke, Life
“What worries you masters you.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - Volume I
John Locke, Life
“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”
John Locke, Life
“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
John Locke, Life
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common.”
John Locke, Life
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a Happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little better for anything else.”
John Locke, Life, Happiness
“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 assumed prejudices, overweening presumption, and narrowing our minds.”
― John Locke, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding
John Locke, Life, Wealth
“Revolt is the right of the people.”
John Locke, Society
“Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves poison the fountain.”
John Locke, Society
“Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Goals
“In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity" Ch.2, 8”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Goals, Life
“To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.”
John Locke, Goals, Life
“Business of man is to be happy.”
John Locke, Goals, Happiness
“It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“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, A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish which lies in the way to knowledge.”
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Truth
“For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Truth, Intelligence/Wisdom
“[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Truth
“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, Truth
“But what if he neglect the care of his soul? I answer: What if he neglect the care of his health or of his estate, which things are nearlier related to the government of the magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express law that such a one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others; they do not guard them from the negligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves. No man can be forced to be rich or healthful whether he will or no. Nay, God Himself will not save men against their wills.”
― John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, Belief
“Whosoever will list himself under the banner of Christ, must, in the first place and above all things, make war upon his own lusts and vices. It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, benignity and meekness of spirit.”
― John Locke, Unknown Book 12380837
John Locke, Belief
“So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.”
John Locke, Belief
“For the civil government can give no new right to the church, nor the church to the civil government. So that, whether the magistrate join himself to any church, or separate from it, the church remains always as it was before — a free and voluntary society. It neither requires the power of the sword by the magistrate’s coming to it, nor does it lose the right of instruction and excommunication by his going from it. This is the fundamental and immutable right of a spontaneous society — that it has power to remove any of its members who transgress the rules of its institution; but it cannot, by the accession of any new members, acquire any right of jurisdiction over those that are not joined with it.”
― John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, Belief, Government
“Now, I appeal to the consciences of those who persecute, wound, torture, and kill other men on the excuse of ‘religion’, whether they do this in a spirit of friendship and kindness.”
― John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, Belief, Friendship, Kindness
“All wealth is the product of labor.”
John Locke, Wealth
“The most precious of all possessions is power over ourselves.”
John Locke, Power
“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs ... has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Power
“The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object....
If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Power, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Power, Government
“As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Power, Government
“...The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.”
John Locke, Government, Freedom
“Men being, as has been said, 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, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Government, Freedom
“Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political or civil society. [....] Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men [e.g., Hobbes] is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Government, Society
“No peace and security among mankind—let alone common friendship—can ever exist as long as people think that governments get their authority from God and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.”
― John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, Friendship, Government, Belief, Anger and Fighting
“This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther then by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases from him.: because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretense be what it will, I have no reason to purpose that he, who would take away my liberty, would not when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him, as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Power, Justice
“Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for't.. And truly, I should have taken Sr. Rt: Filmer's "Patriarcha" as any other treatise, which would perswade all men, that they are slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit, as was his who writ the encomium (praise) of Nero, rather than for a serious discourse meant in earnest, had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the picture in the front of the book, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe, that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation and read it through with all the attention due to a treaties, that made such a noise at its coming abroad and cannot but confess my self mightily surprised, that in a book which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand, useful perhaps to such, whose skill and business it is to raise a dust, and would blind the people, the better to mislead them, but in truth is not of any force to draw those into bondage, who have their eyes open, and so much sense about them as to consider, that chains are but an ill wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Freedom, Society
“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, and keep out the enemy truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding